US and North Korean spies have held secret talks for the past decade

The Washington Post reports that U.S. intelligence officials have met with North Korean counterparts secretly for a decade, a covert channel that allowed communications during tense times, aided in the release of detainees and helped pave the way for President Trump’s historic summit last year with Kim Jong-un.

The secret channel between the CIA and spies from America’s bitter adversary include two  missions to Pyongyang during the Obama administration by the then deputy CIA Director Michael Morell.

The channel appears to have gone dormant late in the Obama administration. Mike Pompeo re-energized it while CIA director, sending an agency officer to meet with North Korean counterparts in Singapore in August 2017. By early 2018, a whirlwind of secret and public talks were underway.

The U.S. and North Korea have never had diplomatic relations and don’t maintain embassies in each other’s capitals. They have long exchanged messages through the North Korean U.N. mission in New York. In contrast, before the new era of summits, the intelligence channel was a way to communicate directly with regime hard-liners.

North Korea’s key interlocutor was Gen. Kim Yong Chol, former head of Pyongyang’s Reconnaissance General Bureau spy agency. Now the senior North Korean negotiator, he met last Friday with President Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo.

[Washington Post]

This entry was posted in DPRK Government, Kim Jong Un, Uncategorized by Grant Montgomery.