North Korea Is Ghosting the Biden Administration

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep. The new issue of FP’s print magazine is out, and this one is all about India, with some excellent features on geopolitics and culture as well as the country’s future under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Read here.

Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: North Korea is ghosting the Biden administration’s diplomatic outreach, the United States takes ties with Japan to the next level, and Russia appears to have a high-profile spy in Vienna. 

In the first months of the Biden administration in 2021, a top U.S. envoy declared that Washington was ready to meet with North Korea “anywhere, anytime, without preconditions” to discuss its rogue nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.

This week, U.S. President Joe Biden himself brought up the same offer during an official visit by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to Washington. “We’re open to dialogue ourselves at any time but without preconditions with the DPRK,” Biden said, using the acronym for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

So what has North Korea done with this blanket overture from Team Biden in between? In short, nothing.

For three years, North Korea has completely ghosted the Biden administration on any and all efforts to talk, a fact the Biden administration openly admits.

“We have reached out to the DPRK many times and have not had any response,” Mira Rapp-Hooper, one of Biden’s top advisors on Asia in the National Security Council, said ahead of Kishida’s visit.

Kishida’s visit this week centered on China, including a first-ever trilateral meeting among Biden, Kishida, and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. over China’s aggressive maneuvers in the South China Sea.

But the North Korea question is looming in the background of all of the Biden administration’s discussions on its Asia strategy. Keep in mind this comes as the White House is already inundated with crises, most notably Russia’s war in Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war.

The question of what, if anything, to do about North Korea beyond repeating the same talking points and waiting for any sort of response has taken on a new urgency in recent months.

Inching along. For starters, North Korea is slowly and steadily building up its ability to launch nuclear weapons at long range, including most recently with the test launch this month of a solid-fuel hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile. All the while, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ratcheted up the tensions with his own saber-rattling rhetoric, saying this week that “now is the time to be ready for war.” (Though Kim has made a lot of such chest-thumping statements in the past that didn’t lead to much.)

Still, many experts and U.S. and South Korean officials we’ve spoken to in recent months agree that North Korea conducting another nuclear weapons test—which would be its seventh—is a matter of when, not if.

Then there’s the fact that Pyongyang has a new(ish) ally in its never-ending battle to circumvent the global sanctions regime targeting its nuclear weapons program: Russia. With a U.N. Security Council veto, Moscow late last month effectively killed a U.N.-led panel of experts that had been monitoring North Korea’s nuclear program and U.N. sanctions for 15 years.

Quid pro oh no. Russia and North Korea have been cozying up as of late, thanks to Moscow being in desperate need of armaments for its costly war in Ukraine and Pyongyang having a massive arsenal of armaments to offer up.

North Korea has shipped an estimated 10,000 containers of munitions to Russia, according to research from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, citing data from the U.S. State Department. There are growing concerns about the potential quid pro quos in this arrangement, namely fears that the Kremlin could buck decades of nonproliferation norms and start supplying Pyongyang with sensitive military technology on ballistic missiles and submarines in exchange for heaps of ammunition.

Biden administration insiders and diplomats from the region tell SitRep that North Korea is likely preparing for Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit Pyongyang in the coming year, though the timing is unclear.

And lest it feel forgotten, Beijing—North Korea’s main benefactor—is sending the Chinese Communist Party’s No. 3 official, Zhao Leji, to Pyongyang this week.

On the other side, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, is visiting Japan and South Korea next week, including a stop at the Demilitarized Zone along South Korea’s border with the North, to discuss next steps with the two close U.S. allies on what to do about North Korea. So far, no one has a good answer.

Rep. Tom Cole has been selected as the next chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, putting a key Republican supporter of Ukraine in a highly influential post overseeing U.S. government funding.

Mark Toner is taking over the State Department’s Bureau of Global Public Affairs as acting assistant secretary after Bill Russo left the post, as Politico’s NatSec Daily reports.

Chandra Donelson is set to take over as the Air Force’s acting chief data and artificial intelligence officer, per Defense Scoop. She is also serving as the Space Force’s top space data and AI officer.

Across the pond, Lindy Cameron is leaving her post as head of Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre to become London’s next envoy to India.

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

Taking the alliance to the moon. During Kishida’s state visit to Washington this week, Biden announced that two Japanese astronauts will be joining the next U.S. manned mission to the moon, and one of those astronauts will be the first non-American to walk on the moon.

This is a nod to how cozy U.S.-Japan relations have become, but it’s also a less-than-subtle shot across the bow at geopolitical rival China, which is ramping up its own space exploration programs to the alarm of some U.S. national security wonks. Because space, after all, is the ultimate high ground. The U.S. moon landing mission, known as Artemis III, is theoretically scheduled for 2026, but sometimes the best-planned deadlines end up facing delays (just ask our editor).

Help wanted. NATO is struggling to find enough troops to fill out its war plans, Jack reports, as it gears up to exercise the new 300,000-troop Allied Response Force this summer. NATO will also have to get reserves—a lot of them. All this is forcing the 32-nation alliance to think differently about how it gets its troops, after all-volunteer armies have become more commonplace and falling unemployment numbers have made recruiting more difficult.

“We have to think about making sure that we have enough military to execute the plans that we have agreed to,” said Royal Netherlands Navy Lt. Adm. Rob Bauer, the chair of NATO’s Military Committee.

A Viennese spy waltz. Jan Marsalek, as chief operating officer of the defunct German payments company Wirecard, tapped top security officials in Vienna to spy for Russia, according to an Austrian police warrant for the arrest of Egisto Ott, a former Austrian police and intelligence official.

Among the stunning revelations contained in the warrant, first reported by Austria’s Der Standard newspaper, Ott is alleged to have helped Marsalek smuggle a cutting-edge NATO cryptography machine to Moscow and supplied information on the address and security arrangements of the investigative journalist Christo Grozev, who exposed the role of the Russian security services in poisoning Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.—Amy Mackinnon

Put On Your Radar

Thursday, April 11: U.S. President Joe Biden hosts a trilateral summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. at the White House.

Kishida delivers an address to a joint session of Congress.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken holds a meeting with New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters at the State Department.

Monday, April 15: Biden meets with Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala. Later, he meets with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz begins a two-day visit to China.

Sudan marks one year of the current round of fighting.

“I felt like giving up today and then I realized it runs in the family.”

—Rob Lee, a reverend and descendant of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, commemorating on X this week’s anniversary of the (older) Lee’s famous surrender to the Union at Appomattox Court House in 1865 that ushered in the end of the U.S. Civil War.

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