North Korean leader Kim Jong-un open to talks with Washington — with one tough precondition

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said Wednesday that he is willing to reopen negotiations with the U.S. on the condition that it “withdraws its hostile policy” toward the nuclear-armed dictatorship.

“There is no reason why we cannot get on well with the U.S.,” Mr. Kim said in an address at the close of the 9th Workers Party Congress, state media reported. The congress, which sets the nation’s five-year policy goals, started Friday and reelected Mr. Kim as chairman this week.

He added that negotiations could restart only if the U.S. respects “the present position of our state specified in the Constitution … and withdraws its hostile policy.”

The latter comments apparently refer to North Korea’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and related delivery systems. Pyongyang enshrined the possession of nuclear arms in a 2023 amendment to its constitution.

Mr. Kim’s stated willingness to improve relations with Washington generated some hope in South Korean media of a thaw in cross-Pacific relations.

But regional experts focused on the restatement by Mr. Kim of his core position.

“I don’t see this as a change in position,” said Mason Richey, who teaches international relations at Seoul’s Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. “There was a fear Kim would close the door to talking at all, so this seems positive; it beats the darker expectations that he would be more belligerent.”

A possible summit location is on the horizon: President Trump will visit China on a state visit set for March 21 to April 2. And some willingness exists on the U.S. side.

Mr. Trump, in a precedent-smashing move in his first term, became the first sitting U.S. president to meet a North Korean leader. He and Mr. Kim held a brace of summits, in Singapore in 2018 and in Hanoi in 2019.

However, Mr. Trump walked out of the second summit after Mr. Kim, who was seeking a phased process, rejected Mr. Trump’s demands that North Korea put all its nuclear facilities on the negotiating table.

Mr. Trump has since continued to speak highly of Mr. Kim, and has expressed openness to renewed talks.

The next leader?

Mr. Kim’s comments were published by state media hours after he and his teenage daughter, Ju-ae, were photographed overseeing a military parade. Both appeared on the reviewing stand, dressed in matching leather coats.

It was the latest high-profile appearance of the teenager at engagements that have fueled speculation in South Korea that she may be groomed to succeed her father.

However, Ju-ae was not presented to the congress, undercutting some expectations.

Meanwhile, Mr. Kim’s restated openness for negotiations with the U.S. does not dismantle what may prove an impassable stumbling block. A widespread view exists among experts that the American public cannot accept a nuclear-armed North Korea.

Even Mr. Trump, who has taken a range of bold and unconventional foreign policy steps, may not be able to finesse that.

“If anyone could pull it off, it would be him. Do I think he will? No,” said Mr. Richey. “I think there are still enough people around him who would not want this — and what political capital would he have to burn through that this would be an advantage for him?”

Looking south

If the outlook for Pyongyang-Washington relations remains murky, the outlook for Pyongyang-Seoul relations is murkier.

Mr. Kim reiterated his hard-line stance toward Seoul in his comments to the congress.

He noted that Pyongyang has “put a historic end to the abnormal relations with [South Korea] … and made a final crucial decision to define these relations as the most hostile state-to-state relationship.”

In 2024, Mr. Kim officially abandoned the long-held concept of reunification with the South, dismantling related institutions and even demolishing a ceremonial arch in Pyongyang. South Korea was dubbed an enemy state.

This posture aggrieves the Lee Jae-myung administration in Seoul, which has endlessly announced its willingness to engage Pyongyang.

One expert says Pyongyang’s stance centers on the South’s limited ability to offer the North what it needs — such as offering economic aid and defying international sanctions.

“They think South Korea dangerous to them and also useless,” said Fyedor Tertitsky, a North Korea researcher at Seoul’s Kookmin University. “They think that South Korea has to bow to the U.S. and has to follow the U.S. on sanctions.”

Even the pro-engagement Seoul administration, recognizing their strategic dependency on the U.S., did not break U.N. sanctions on North Korea.

Moreover, since 2024, North Korea is neither as economically nor as politically vulnerable as it once was: It has expanded its alliances beyond China.

In 2024, Mr. Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is bogged down in a long, bloody and expensive war in Ukraine, signed a strategic partnership, including a mutual defense treaty.

Within this partnership, North Korea is supplying artillery, missiles, ammunition and soldiers to Russia, in return for diplomatic and economic support.

Russia boasts national strengths in what North Korea needs most: Diplomatic presence in international institutions including the U.N. Security Council, and physical assets including energy, grain and arms technologies.

Mr. Kim’s slight diplomatic outreach may be hedging against a potential end to the Ukraine War, when Moscow’s support will likely wither.

“I do think they are looking toward the end of the Russia-Ukraine war,” Mr. Richey said. “When that happens, the gravy train from Moscow will slow down.”