The Trump administration suffered another setback with the announcement that Joseph Yun, the U.S. special representative on North Korea policy, will be retiring:

The State Department’s point-man on North Korea, Joseph Yun, will leave his post on Friday, even as there are glimmers of hope that Pyongyang might finally be willing to sit down for talks with Washington. Yun, special representative for the DPRK policy and deputy assistant secretary for Korea and Japan, told the CNN that "it was completely my decision to retire at this time." State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had accepted Yun's resignation "reluctantly." "Ambassador Joe Yun, a respected member of the Senior Foreign Service, has decided to retire for personal reasons," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement. “We are sorry to see him retire but our diplomatic efforts regarding North Korea will continue based on our maximum pressure campaign to isolate the DPRK until it agrees to begin credible talks toward a denuclearized Korean peninsula.”

It was not immediately clear who would replace Yun or if the vacancy would be filled with a US official maintaining closer ties to Trump. In the latest attempt to defuse the crisis over North Korea’s weapons program, South Korea urged Washington and Pyongyang to give ground to allow for talks, and U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday reiterated he would negotiate with North Korea, but only under the right conditions. “A huge loss for the U.S. government at a critical moment.”

South Korea’s foreign ministry said it had been aware that Yun planned to step down and said the South Korean government “highly appreciates Yun’s role while he was serving as U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy.”

Yun’s departure comes as Trump has yet to nominate an ambassador to South Korea, and the administration’s failure to fill that post and a number of other key foreign policy positions has brought criticism in Congress and among former U.S. official and experts. Yun, a 32-year foreign service veteran, traveled to North Korea last June to help secure the release of comatose American student Otto Warmbier, whose detention and subsequent death further soured relations between Washington and Pyongyang. His departure will leave the Trump administration without an envoy for engaging North Korea or an ambassador in South Korea.
United States Special Representative for North Korea Policy Joseph Y. Yun announces his retirement, effective 2 March.