U.S. President Donald Trump says the United States has begun direct high level talks with North Korea. The statement comes weeks before a proposed summit between Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, visiting Trump for bilateral talks, expressed a desire for Japan's interests to also be on the table during the talks. VOA's Jesusemen Oni has more.</s>SEOUL, Korea, Republic Of – North and South Korea installed the first-ever telephone hotline between their leaders Friday as they prepare for a rare summit next week aimed at resolving the nuclear standoff with Pyongyang.

South Korea’s presidential office said a successful test call was conducted on the hotline between Seoul’s presidential Blue House and Pyongyang’s powerful State Affairs Commission.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un plan to make their first telephone conversation sometime before their face-to-face meeting next Friday at the border truce village of Panmunjom.

READ MORE: Donald Trump says ‘good relationship formed’ in meeting between Mike Pompeo, Kim Jong Un

South Korean officials say the hotline, which will be maintained after the summit, will help facilitate dialogue and reduce misunderstanding during times of tension.

“The historic direct telephone line between the leaders of the South and North was connected a short while ago,” South Korean presidential official Youn Kun Young said in a news briefing.

“The test call went on for 4 minutes and 19 seconds starting at 3:41 p.m. with (officials from) both sides speaking to each other … The connection was smooth and the voice quality was very good. It was like calling next door,” he said.

WATCH: Trump promises tough stand on North Korea ahead of expected meeting with Kim Jong Un



Kim, a third-generation dictator, is the chairman of the State Affairs Commission, North Korea’s supreme decision-making institution that was created in 2016 to replace the National Defence Commission he inherited from his father. The new body includes the country’s most powerful individuals in state, military and party affairs and is seen as crucial for Kim to consolidate his power and centralize governance.

The meeting between Kim and Moon will only be the third summit between the rivals since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War and could prove to be significant in the global diplomatic push to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis. A separate summit between Kim and President Donald Trump is anticipated in May or June.

READ MORE: North, South Korea reportedly discussing plan to announce end of war following summit

North Korea in January reopened a border hotline between the countries after nearly two years of radio silence as the Koreas resumed dialogue following a period of animosity surrounding the North’s nuclear weapons and missile tests. The revival of the hotline at Panmunjom came days after Kim in a New Year’s speech proposed negotiations with the South on easing tensions and the North’s participation in February’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

North Korea sent hundreds of people to the southern games, including Kim’s sister, who expressed her brother’s desire to meet with Moon for a summit. South Korean officials later brokered a potential summit between Kim and Trump.

North Korea’s abrupt diplomatic outreach comes after a flurry of weapons tests that marked 2017, including the underground detonation of an alleged thermonuclear warhead and three launches of developmental intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to strike the U.S. mainland.

While South Korean and U.S. officials have said Kim is likely trying to save his broken economy from heavy sanctions, some analysts see him as entering the negotiations from a position of strength after having declared his nuclear force as complete.

READ MORE: Donald Trump says U.S., North Korea talking at ‘extremely high levels’

Seoul, which shuttled between Pyongyang and Washington to set up the meetings, says Kim has expressed genuine interest in dealing away his nuclear weapons. But North Korea for decades has been pushing a concept of “denuclearization” that bears no resemblance to the American definition, vowing to pursue nuclear development unless Washington removes its troops from the peninsula and the nuclear umbrella defending South Korea and Japan.</s>North Korean leader Kim Jong Un applauds during a military parade marking the 105th birth anniversary of the country's founding father, Kim Il Sung, in Pyongyang April 15, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appears to be making huge concessions before meeting with President Donald Trump or South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

Moon said on Thursday, after South Korean diplomats held a series of meetings with Kim and his inner circle, that North Korea essentially wants nothing in return for complete denuclearization.

Moon said North Korea wants "complete denuclearization" of the Korean Peninsula, something experts usually take to mean a removal of US forces from South Korea in addition to removing North Korea's nuclear weapons.

But Moon said that's not the case.

"I don't think denuclearization has different meanings for South and North Korea. The North is expressing a will for a complete denuclearization," Moon said during a lunch with chief executives of Korean media companies, according to Reuters.

Even more shocking, North Korea won't ask the US to do much in return for its denuclearization.

"They have not attached any conditions that the US cannot accept, such as the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea," Moon said. "All they are talking about is the end of hostile policies against North Korea, followed by a guarantee of security."

Essentially, according to Moon, all North Korea wants is the US to promise it will not attack it and end the sanctions and other forms of overt pressure.

Why that might be too good to be true

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un provides guidance with Ri Hong Sop (2nd L) and Hong Sung Mu (R) on a nuclear weapons program in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang September 3, 2017. KCNA via REUTERS

For North Korea, these statements represent an absolute about-face. North Korea has for decades defended its pursuit of nuclear weapons as a means to deter the US from invasion, or even to destroy it.

North Korea has spent decades criticizing the US for its military presence in South Korea, and routinely complains about military exercises it holds with South Korea, sometimes launching missiles during the events.

Additionally, North Korea has entered into and exited out of denuclearization and peace talks several times in the past, each time leaving the US frustrated after gaining much-needed cash in the form of sanctions relief. None of the many experts contacted by Business Insider doubt that stalling for sanctions relief may be Kim's game this time around, too.

U.S. President Donald Trump (R) and South Korean President Moon Jae-in deliver a joint statement from the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, U.S., June 30, 2017. REUTERS/Carlos Barria South Korea's President Moon is not an impartial messenger when communicating North Korea's stance to the world. Moon won office on a progressive platform that promoted talks and engagement with North Korea.

With many Korean families divided by the war and the armistice, Moon also faces pressure to reunite both Koreas.

Seoul, South Korea's capital of some 25 million people, also stands to be the hardest-hit city if war struck between the US and North Korea.

While the Trump and Moon maintain their alliance is ironclad and they're committed to peace, Trump's new national security adviser, John Bolton, has argued extensively in favor of bombing North Korea, and almost never mentions how many South Koreans could die in that attack.

Maybe Trump really did nail it

President Donald Trump gestures during a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Trump's private Mar-a-Lago club, Wednesday, April 18, 2018, in Palm Beach, Florida. Lynne Sladky/AP

Although talks with North Korea have failed before, a few things are different this time. North Korea recently announced it had completed its nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile program, which experts assess it can use as a bargaining chip in negotiations. With all tests completed and what North Korea believes is a working missile that can hit the US with a nuclear payload, Kim may now be motivated to talk.

Kim is also younger than his father was when he entered talks with the US, and possibly more open to changing his country. He's already allowed markets and capitalism to creep into the country, and recently allowed South Korean pop bands to play a show, which he reportedly loved.

Today, North Korea is under greater sanctions pressure than ever before. Andrea Berger, an expert on North Korean sanctions at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies told Business Insider that it's now virtually impossible to do any business with North Korea that doesn't violate international sanctions. Fuel prices are way up in the country, and r eports of the people becoming disenchanted with their strict leadership roll in frequently.

Perhaps above all, North Korea has never faced a US president that spoke so candidly, and so often, about bombing it. In a way none of his predecessors before him have done, Trump has made North Korea a top priority and portrayed a leader willing to go to the insane length of nuclear war to disarm North Korea.</s>After US President Donald Trump agreed to hold a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a key question remains unresolved for the summit, as both sides have not reached an agreement on the location of the meeting, which is expected to take place in late May or June.

READ MORE: Japan Hopes US-N Korea Summit to Pave Way for Settlement of Nuclear Issue – Abe

US media reported that senior US officials had ruled out a number of locations over security concerns, such as North Korea’s capital Pyongyang, the Chinese capital of Beijing and Mongolia, as well as Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone on the Korean Peninsula. The US side is reportedly pushing for more neutral locations in Europe, such as Geneva or Switzerland.

North Korea watchers suggested that both sides needed to step out of their comfort zone and make compromises before they could reach an agreement on the location of the upcoming summit.

"All of the proposed locations have their pros and cons, respectively. In a sense, it’s inevitable for both sides to break away from the previous travel preference of their leaders," Zhao Tong, a fellow at Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing, told Sputnik.

The Beijing-based expert illustrated the dilemma Kim Jong Un faces if he has to travel to Europe for the summit.

"For Kim Jong Un to travel to Europe, there’s still a question of whether he would agree to take a flight provided by a foreign country, or if he would allow an Air Koryo flight to stop and refuel on the way. Would the mid-way refueling be viewed as a sign of weakness in Air Koryo’s planes and hurt North Korea’s dignity? North Korean leaders have never traveled overseas on foreign aircraft while still in office. Without any precedents, we don't know the possibility of them accepting this option," he said.

Southeast Asian nations may not be a better choice for North Korea, compared to locations in Europe, the expert added.

Zhao explained why Trump might not want to travel to the Korean Peninsula for the summit.

"For Trump, Panmunjom in the Demilitarized Zone is too deserted to hold this grand summit. It’s not enough to support the historic scene Trump wants. And after the inter-Korea summit takes place there, Trump definitely doesn’t want to follow the footsteps of others and would prefer a new location," he said.

Europe-based North Korea watchers suggested that Jeju Island off the coast of the Korean Peninsula could be a viable option.

"Another possibility [for the summit] I have not seen mentioned in the media is Jeju Island in South Korea. The summit between [former South Korean president] Kim Dae-jung and [former North Korean leader] Kim Jong-il was held in Pyongyang. It could be time for Kim Jong Un go to South Korea, not to Seoul, but perhaps to Jeju Island, which has excellent facilities for the summit. I think Kim Jong Un would be more comfortable having a meeting somewhere in Asia," Stein Tonnesson, a research professor focusing on East Asian peace research at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo, told Sputnik.

Trump expressed optimism about his upcoming summit with the North Korean leader and stressed his firm stance by vowing to "pull out" if he finds meeting not productive.

"If I think that if it's a meeting that is not going to be fruitful, we're not going to go. If the meeting when I'm there is not fruitful I will respectfully leave the meeting," Trump said at a press conference on Wednesday.

Despite his usual hawkish rhetoric, Trump may become more pragmatic when meeting with Kim Jong Un, Zhao from the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center argued.

READ MORE: US Strikes on Syria Message to Iran, N Korea — Constitutional Commision Member

"I believe Trump’s comments fit his usual style for negotiations. Before the negotiations start, he would raise the bar really high with all kinds of excessive demands. It was the same situation when South Korea and the United States negotiated on trade issues. Trump made a lot of demands, but once South Korea offered some concessions, Trump was easily satisfied. As long as they can meet, I don’t think Trump will admit that this important decision of meeting Kim Jong Un was a mistake. No matter what kind of results come out in the end, Trump would describe the meeting as a key historic success," he said.

"It’s unlikely for Kim Jong Un to make fundamental concessions on his nuclear arsenal. It’s possible for him to set denuclearization as a long-term goal. But it’s hard for me to imagine North Korea to agree to a specific timetable of 3-5 years to eliminate its nuclear weapons completely. I believe Trump will not hold onto the difficult demand of complete denuclearization for North Korea in the short term. He could accept a promise from North Korea to denuclearize in the future and start the process of reaching this goal," he said.

Professor Tonnesson from Peace Research Institute in Oslo pointed out that the details of the agreement between Trump and Kim Jong Un, as well as how it is going to be executed, will be the true testament whether the summit is a success.

"There will be a clear promise from the North Korean side to contribute to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. But the details are what really count here. I doubt North Korea would sign on to international inspection or reduction in their number of nuclear bombs. These are the kind of details that hopefully someone in the Trump administration would put on the negotiation table and get North Korea to agree to a concrete deadline. I do not trust the Trump administration’s ability to develop this kind of waterproof agreement sufficiently. My fear is that Kim Jong Un and Trump will make a vague deal and they can tell the world that we have this great peace agreement. And next year, we see a conflict coming up about the implementation," he said.

After announcing North Korea completed the development of its nuclear arms program last November, following the successful test of its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile, Kim Jong Un adapted a foreign policy that focuses on dialogue with the outside world, by sending a delegation to the Winter Olympics held in South Korea and agreeing to meet with both South Korean and US leaders.

READ MORE: Russian Admiral Explains Why Western Strike on Syria Was Poorly Coordinated

Kim Jong Un has always been following the same strategy consistently and aspired to become a reform-minded leader like Deng Xiaoping, who is often viewed as the architect the reform and opening-up policy that kick-started China’s explosive economic growth in the past 40 years, Zhao from the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center suggested.

"I believe North Korea had a two-step strategy. The first step was to develop basic nuclear deterrence capabilities at all cost to meet its fundamental security needs. This target was reached by the end of 2017. Now they’re entering the second step of developing normalized relations with the international community, while maintaining its existing nuclear capabilities. The most appealing signal Kim Jong Un sent out is that he wants to focus on economic development, after addressing the nation’s security concerns. His long-term goal is to become North Korea’s Deng Xiaoping. He hopes to turn North Korea into a prosperous and well respected normal country in the international community," he said.

The expert believes such intentions from Kim Jong Un are widely welcome by many countries, including the United States, because North Korea will be less obsessed with developing nuclear weapons and become a less security threat in the region, once it becomes an accepted member of the international community.

Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the contributors and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.</s>Pompeo, nominated by Trump last month as secretary of state, played advance man for the president, laying the groundwork for a planned meeting between the American and North Korean leaders that has been shrouded in mystery ever since the president unexpectedly agreed to it in early March.

“Meeting went very smoothly and a good relationship was formed,” Trump said in an early morning tweet before he went golfing with Japan’s visiting prime minister, Shinzo Abe. “Details of Summit are being worked out now. Denuclearization will be a great thing for World, but also for North Korea!”

Pompeo is still awaiting confirmation to his new post and faces a challenging vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where two Democrats have come out against him. It was unclear how the news of his secret mission would affect his path to confirmation.

But the visit underscores the confidence that Trump has developed in Pompeo, a former Tea Party congressman who has emerged as one of the president’s closest advisers — a stark contrast to Rex Tillerson, whom Trump fired as secretary of state days after he accepted Kim’s invitation to meet.

It also underscores Trump’s unorthodox approach to one of the riskiest diplomatic gambits of his presidency. However trusted by the president, Pompeo is hardly a traditional emissary. He is not yet the nation’s chief diplomat but a lame duck as the nation’s spymaster.

Few details about Pompeo’s trip, which officials said happened over Easter weekend, had emerged Wednesday morning. But some former administration officials expressed surprise that he returned from Pyongyang without any visible concessions, like the release of three Americans detained in North Korea.

In 2014, the then-director of national intelligence, James Clapper, traveled secretly to North Korea to negotiate the release of two Americans, Kenneth Bae and Matthew Todd Miller. Three Korean-Americans — Kim Dong Chul, Kim Sang-duk, and Kim Hak-song — currently are being held on charges of espionage and committing hostile acts toward the North Korean state.

The administration also has not agreed on a date for the meeting of Trump and Kim, which officials said pointed to problems in settling on a site for the encounter. On Tuesday, Trump told reporters the White House was looking at five potential locations.

Some of the potential sites — like Singapore, Sweden, or Switzerland — are far from North Korea, posing a challenge to Kim’s rickety fleet of aircraft. Others, like the Peace House in the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea, could pose an optics problem for the White House, which does not want Trump to be viewed as traveling to Kim’s doorstep.

The Mongolian capital, Ulaanbaatar, has surfaced as a possible compromise. Without a site, however, the White House has been unable to announce a date, though officials are sticking to Trump’s recent declaration that the meeting will be in late May or early June.

On Tuesday, Trump added to the mystery surrounding the visit by appearing to confirm that he had been in direct contact with Kim himself. He later clarified that while the talks were at “the highest levels,” he would “leave it a little bit short of that.”

Pompeo’s involvement with North Korea predated Trump’s decision to meet Kim, several officials said. He has been dealing with North Korean representatives through a channel that runs between the CIA and its North Korean counterpart, the Reconnaissance General Bureau.

He also has been in close touch with the director of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, Suh Hoon, who officials said brokered Kim’s invitation to Trump.

While a meeting of Trump and Kim would be one of the boldest diplomatic gambles of recent years, it was orchestrated largely by the intelligence services of the three countries.

Officials said Suh, the South Korean spy chief, laid the groundwork for Kim’s invitation in negotiations and a subsequent meeting in Pyongyang with Kim Yong Chol, a powerful general who heads inter-Korean relations and used to run North Korea’s intelligence service.

Kim Yong Chol led the North’s delegation to the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, where he sat steps from Trump’s daughter Ivanka. The two did not speak.

Suh was one of two South Korean envoys who visited the White House to brief Trump on their meeting with Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang — which led to the president’s impromptu decision to accept Kim’s invitation.

For Pompeo, who now has an office at the State Department, the choice to use the intelligence channel was mostly a convenience — allowing him to be involved in the planning while he awaited his move to the State Department.

Still, some officials expressed concern about the CIA’s taking the lead in orchestrating a leader-to-leader meeting — work that would normally be the province of the State Department. It is not clear that Pompeo took anyone from the State Department with him to North Korea.

The intelligence officials on the North Korean side, they said, are shadowy figures, not least Kim Yong Chol himself, who is accused of masterminding the torpedo attack that sank a South Korean navy ship in 2010, killing 46 sailors, and a deadly artillery attack on a South Korean island.

The State Department’s role in North Korea dwindled after Trump publicly split with Tillerson over his efforts to open a diplomatic channel to the North, initially to obtain the release of the three Americans but also to set the stage for a broader negotiation.

In October, while Tillerson was in Beijing, Trump tweeted, “I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man...”

The State Department recently lost its chief North Korea negotiator, Joseph Yun, who retired from the Foreign Service, in part because of his frustration with his agency’s diminished role.

The timing of Tillerson’s departure, officials said, was not coincidental. Trump wanted to have Pompeo in place to handle an opening to North Korea. But Pompeo has expressed extremely hawkish views about North Korea, suggesting last summer that the United States should push for regime change.

“It would be a great thing to denuclearize the peninsula, to get those weapons off of that, but the thing that is most dangerous about it is the character who holds the control over them today,” Pompeo said at the Aspen Security Forum.

“So from the administration’s perspective, the most important thing we can do is separate those two. Right?” he said. “Separate capacity and someone who might well have intent and break those two apart.”

Last week, Pompeo insisted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he had never advocated for regime change.

“Just to be clear, my role as a diplomat is to make sure that we never get to a place where we have to confront the difficult situation in Korea that this country has been headed for now for a couple of decades,” he added.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.</s>Recent talks between the leaders of North and South Korea have led to some cautiously optimistic predictions after decades of hostilities.

The volatile relationship between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and most of the rest of the world has largely hinged on his incessant pursuit of nuclear weapons.

As part of ongoing communications, South Korean President Moon Jae-in indicated this week that North Korea is willing to consider “complete denuclearization” as part of a plan that could restore peace to the peninsula.

According to Moon’s announcement Thursday, Kim’s demands do not include deal-breakers that might stall a planned summit between the North Korean leader and U.S. President Donald Trump.

“They have not attached any conditions that the U.S. cannot accept, such as the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea,” he said.

North Korea had included that demand in multiple previous preliminary talks about denuclearlization, stalling those negotiations.

This time is different, Moon claimed in his address this week.

“All they are expressing is the end of hostile policies against North Korea, followed by a guarantee of security,” he said.

The South Korean president noted, however, that those conditions could be enough to derail hopes of a denuclearized North.

He acknowledged that talks between the two Koreas have “a lot of constraints” since Kim has tied his conditions to sanction relief and his planned talks with Trump. In the interim, Moon explained that there is little the two nations can do to further a plan toward denuclearizing the peninsula.

Increased communications between Kim and Moon could have benefits for the two nations, though.

Technically at war since a 1953 armistice, relatively cooler tensions between North and South Korea that began prior to the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games have led to renewed talks of a treaty that would officially end the Korean War.

Ahead of a summit between the U.S. and North Korean leaders, CIA Director — and Trump’s pick to replace Rex Tillerson as secretary of state — Mike Pompeo made a secret trip to meet with Kim. He later said the two were able to form a “good relationship.”

RELATED: Trump Fires Off Warning to KJU: I’ll Leave the Meeting if It Isn’t ‘Fruitful’

Trump and Kim are expected to meet in person at some point in the next two months.

The U.S. president has also expressed support for efforts to secure a peace treaty between the North and South.

In a statement Tuesday, he claimed that people “don’t realize the Korean War has not ended.”

Referencing the more than six decades since the truce between the two nations, Trump said that the war is “going on right now.”

He endorsed ongoing talks to bring the war to an end.

“Subject to a deal they have my blessing and they do have my blessing to discuss that,” the president said.

What do you think? Scroll down to comment below.</s>Room 615 in Vladivostok's Hotel Gavan is a cramped, two-room "business suite" with green wallpaper and carpeting. Yet when former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il traveled to Russia's Pacific coast in 2002, the modest digs served as his presidential suite.

A commemorative plaque on the side of the boxy hotel is a lone reminder of the visit by Kim Jong Il, father of North Korea's current leader Kim Jong Un. Before his death in 2011, Kim Sr. made three trips to Russia in his famous, slow-moving armored train.

While North Korea's border with Russia is only 11 miles long, it has served as a vital link to the outside world since the end of World War II, when the Kremlin helped establish the reclusive Communist state. After coming into office in 2000, Russian President Vladimir Putin worked hard to build transportation and energy links across North Korea to the lucrative markets of South Korea.

"Russia currently has the best relationship with North Korea among the major powers," said Artyom Lukin, an international relations professor at the Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok. "Even China, which is North Korea's only formal ally, has frankly problematic relations. So probably Russia is the country which North Korea trusts the most — or to put it more correctly, distrusts the least."

But as Pyongyang continued to ignore warnings to give up its nuclear weapons program last year, Moscow had little choice but to join China in signing onto the latest round of United Nations sanctions in September.

At the same time, the Kremlin saw an opening to act as a mediator between North Korea and the United States, said Lukin. And that's why it went along with the sanctions, intended to hit North Korea's economy by limiting its oil imports, banning textile exports — and requiring Russia to expel some 30,000 North Korean migrant workers.

In his second-floor office in a shabby building a few steps away from the Hotel Gavan, Vladimir Baranov was fuming over the new restrictions.

In May, his company, InvestStroyTrest, started a ferry service between Vladivostok and the North Korean port of Rajin, a 12-hour ride along the coast.

"Of course I don't have any cargo volumes with these sanctions, which ban even wheelchairs," said Baranov. "I'm not working right now because there's no cargo."

His company's ferry, a North Korean vessel named the Man Gyong Bong, is now stuck in Rajin after Vladivostok port officials refused to let it dock under suspicion it was carrying sanctioned goods — a claim that Baranov is disputing in court.

Baranov is still hoping he'll find passengers among Russian and Chinese tourists, though he can soon forget about the region's thousands of North Korean migrant workers that Moscow says will have to leave.

Most of these laborers work on construction sites and farms in the Russian Far East, though some are employed at the North Korean restaurants that dot Vladivostok. At the Koryo restaurant next to city hall, young North Korean women in traditional costumes belt out sentimental Korean tunes over the karaoke system.

"They're great workers who'll work day and night," said Valentin Pak, a Russian entrepreneur and politician whose own ancestors emigrated from Korea five generations ago. "They will be sorely missed."

Pak said it will be hard to replace the North Koreans and is skeptical of statements by regional officials that they can be replaced with workers from India or Central Asia.

Ever since Russia began settling its remote Pacific territories in the mid-19th century, labor shortages have been a serious problem — and workers from neighboring Korea were a logical choice to help fill the gap. During Soviet times and into the 1990s, North Koreans toiled under brutal conditions in Siberian logging camps run by the North Korean government under an agreement between Moscow and Pyongyang.

Today the government in Pyongyang still profits from its citizens going to Russia for work, which is the whole idea behind the restrictions on North Korean workers.

"For North Korea, it's a business, because all the laborers who work here pay their government to be here," said Irina Tyan, a businesswoman who co-owns a farm with the North Korean consulate in Vladivostok. Like Pak, she is a member of Russia's ethnic Korean community, which is well integrated into Russian society.

Tyan's North Korean partners invested $2 million into a 10,000-acre farm that grows soy, corn, wheat and oats. Until last year, the business employed 10 Russians and about 20 North Koreans.

The North Korean workers earned 20,000 rubles ($320) per month plus room, board and clothing, Tyan said, though she didn't pay them directly but via their North Korean government supervisor.

She disagrees with reports that North Koreans work in slave-like conditions in Russia. They just don't make the same demands as Russian workers — such as an eight-hour workday with lunch and smoking breaks — and are under the strict guidance of their North Korean minders, Tyan said.

"They're afraid, that's clear," she said. "But they'll still do anything to get here because they can go where they want, go shopping, buy whatever they want or need. They won't say it out loud, but it's clear that they want to continue living and working here."

After her quota of 30 North Korean workers was canceled because of the sanctions, Tyan's last eight North Koreans are due to go home this month. If the sanctions aren't lifted by next year's planting season, she said she would have to sell the business.

"Of course, nobody knows what will happen next," Tyan said. "Maybe they'll lift the sanctions tomorrow, maybe in a year, maybe never."

One Russian businessman who remains optimistic is Ivan Tonkikh, who runs RasonConTrans, a cargo terminal in Rajin, North Korea, jointly owned by Russian Railways and the North Korean state.

Although the venture is exempt from the latest U.N. sanctions, Tonkikh is having trouble finding partners who would be willing to export coal via Rajin. While business is at a standstill, he said that he wants to convince the U.N. to allow the delivery of humanitarian shipments to his port.

Tonkikh downplays the economic levers Moscow has over Pyongyang, though he adds that the cargo terminal is an investment in a brighter future.

"Rajin is only the beginning. It's the first segment of a restored trans-Korean railway," said Tonkikh. "We call Rajin the 'short track to consensus' on the Korean Peninsula."

If that dream ever comes true, one day goods from South Korea will travel by rail all the way to Europe across Russia.

Kim Jong Il's epic train journeys to Russia may have been a harbinger of what's to come.</s>KEY WEST, FLORIDA
• North Korea has dropped its demand that US troops be removed from South Korea as a condition for giving up its nuclear weapons, South Korea's President said in presenting the idea to the United States.

President Moon Jae In portrayed the proposal as a concession on the eve of talks involving the two Koreas and the US. The North has long demanded that the 28,500 US troops be withdrawn, citing their presence as a justification of its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

But in Washington, the Trump administration privately dismissed the idea that it was a capitulation by the North because a US withdrawal from the South was never on the table.

Mr Mike Pompeo, the Central Intelligence Agency director whom President Donald Trump secretly sent to Pyongyang two weeks ago to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, did not ask him to take such a step, senior officials said.

The move could increase pressure on the US to support negotiations between North and South Korea on a peace treaty that would end the Korean War. While Mr Trump gave those talks his blessing this week, officials said his ultimate goal is to force North Korea to relinquish its nuclear programme.

A peace treaty, they said, should be signed only after the North has given up its weapons.

Mr Trump has expressed excitement about his own planned summit meeting with Mr Kim but on Wednesday, he said he was ready to bail out before, or even during, the meeting if he concluded that diplomacy was not bearing fruit.

He also said the US would continue sanctions on North Korea until it relinquishes its nuclear programme.

"We have great respect for many aspects of what they're doing, but we have to get it together," Mr Trump said at a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

"We have to end nuclear weapons."

Analysts and former officials said the White House was right to be wary of Mr Kim's offer. They said it could drive a wedge between the US and South Korea.

Many analysts were sceptical about Mr Moon's version of events, noting that he wants the summit to be a success so that Mr Trump will go ahead with his own meeting with Mr Kim, tentatively planned for late May or early June.

Dr Vipin Narang, a non-proliferation expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said he would be "very, very careful" about interpreting Mr Moon's statement as a sign that Mr Kim had conceded that the troops could stay.

"This is a very clever semantic pirouette," he said, adding that just because North Korea had not explicitly asked for US forces to leave did not mean that it had not included that step as part of its demand for "ending hostilities".

Others noted that North Korea has said very little about all this.

"I sure wish KCNA were the one saying this stuff," Dr Robert Kelly, a political scientist at South Korea's Pusan National University, wrote on Twitter. The KCNA or Korean Central News Agency is one of the North's main mouthpieces.</s>North Korea has expressed its commitment to "complete denuclearisation" of the Korean peninsula and has not attached conditions, South Korea's president says, but Washington remains wary and has vowed to maintain "maximum pressure" on Pyongyang.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in said agreements about denuclearisation, establishing a peace regime and normalisation of relations between the Koreas and the US should not be difficult to reach through a North-South summit next week, and a later summit planned between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump.

"I don't think denuclearisation has different meanings for South and North Korea. The North is expressing a will for a complete denuclearisation," Moon said on Thursday during a lunch with chief executives of Korean media companies.

"They have not attached any conditions that the US cannot accept, such as the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea. All they are talking about is the end of hostile policies against North Korea, followed by a guarantee of security."

CIA Director Mike Pompeo met Kim this month to discuss a proposed summit with Trump and reported that the North Korean leader was not demanding the withdrawal of all US forces as a precondition for the meeting, a US official briefed on Pompeo's trip told Reuters.

However, the official, who did not want to be identified, said that while Kim was open to negotiating "denuclearisation", the term remained undefined and potentially deceptive, given the need for a timetable and an inspection regime.

North Korea has defended its nuclear and missile programs in the face of worldwide condemnation and sanctions as a necessary deterrent against perceived US hostility.

It has said over the years that it could consider giving up its nuclear arsenal if the US removed its troops from South Korea and withdrew its so-called nuclear umbrella of deterrence from South Korea and Japan.

On Wednesday, Trump, who says he plans to meet Kim in late May or early June for an unprecedented summit to try to persuade him to give up his nuclear weapons, reaffirmed the "unwavering" US commitment to maintain that umbrella.

In a joint statement after talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Trump said the US commitment to defend Japan "through the full range of US military capabilities" was "unwavering".

They reiterated their commitment to the "permanent and verifiable denuclearisation of North Korea" and the need for Pyongyang to abandon all of its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs, while vowing stepped up sanctions enforcement.

Trump said on Wednesday that Pompeo formed a "good relationship" with Kim when he met him in Pyongyang and the US President said he hoped the summit would be successful. But Trump warned he would call it off if he did not think it would produce results.

Trump told a joint news conference with Abe that his campaign of "maximum pressure" on North Korea would continue until Pyongyang gave up its nuclear weapons.

In Geneva on Thursday, US Disarmament Ambassador Robert Wood told a news conference North Korea must show that it is "serious about getting rid of its nuclear weapons program" and take "concrete steps", adding: "We've got a long way to go".</s>Recent talks between the leaders of North and South Korea have led to some cautiously optimistic predictions after decades of hostilities.

The volatile relationship between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and most of the rest of the world has largely hinged on his incessant pursuit of nuclear weapons.

As part of ongoing communications, South Korean President Moon Jae-in indicated this week that North Korea is willing to consider “complete denuclearization” as part of a plan that could restore peace to the peninsula.

According to Moon’s announcement Thursday, Kim’s demands do not include deal-breakers that might stall a planned summit between the North Korean leader and U.S. President Donald Trump.

“They have not attached any conditions that the U.S. cannot accept, such as the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea,” he said.

North Korea had included that demand in multiple previous preliminary talks about denuclearlization, stalling those negotiations.

This time is different, Moon claimed in his address this week.

“All they are expressing is the end of hostile policies against North Korea, followed by a guarantee of security,” he said.

The South Korean president noted, however, that those conditions could be enough to derail hopes of a denuclearized North.

He acknowledged that talks between the two Koreas have “a lot of constraints” since Kim has tied his conditions to sanction relief and his planned talks with Trump. In the interim, Moon explained that there is little the two nations can do to further a plan toward denuclearizing the peninsula.

Increased communications between Kim and Moon could have benefits for the two nations, though.

Technically at war since a 1953 armistice, relatively cooler tensions between North and South Korea that began prior to the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games have led to renewed talks of a treaty that would officially end the Korean War.

Ahead of a summit between the U.S. and North Korean leaders, CIA Director — and Trump’s pick to replace Rex Tillerson as secretary of state — Mike Pompeo made a secret trip to meet with Kim. He later said the two were able to form a “good relationship.”

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Trump and Kim are expected to meet in person at some point in the next two months.

The U.S. president has also expressed support for efforts to secure a peace treaty between the North and South.

In a statement Tuesday, he claimed that people “don’t realize the Korean War has not ended.”

Referencing the more than six decades since the truce between the two nations, Trump said that the war is “going on right now.”

He endorsed ongoing talks to bring the war to an end.

“Subject to a deal they have my blessing and they do have my blessing to discuss that,” the president said.

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South Korea states that North Korea has expressed a desire to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula without attaching preconditions such as withdrawing US troops.