Opinion | To defuse tensions with North Korea, let the European Union try

North Korea has no interest in talking to the United States. This is evident from the lack of any dialogue with Washington since Joe Biden became president and occasional statements from the Biden administration that Pyongyang is not responding to its overtures.

That would be bad enough, except North Korea also has no interest in talking to South Korea. Many in the North Korea-watching commentariat have debated the meaning of Pyongyang’s recent statements that define South Korea as an enemy with whom unification is not possible.

Do they intend war? Do they see themselves as a separate regime in perpetuity? Is it all a bluff in the hopes for a change in administrations in Washington later this year? Whatever the rationale is, dialogue with Yoon Suk-yeol’s conservative administration in Seoul can be ruled out.

North Korea refused to talk to Yoon’s past conservative predecessors and is likely to continue that trend. Furthermore, the coming of a second Donald Trump administration may not result in a new age of negotiations – at least not at first.

Pyongyang has tested the resolve of new administrations in Washington and Seoul, even those it eventually enters into dialogue with. The last time Trump came to office in 2017 was among the tensest times on the peninsula since the nuclear crisis of the 1990s – ultimately resolved by behind-the-scenes talks between Pyongyang and the progressive Moon Jae-in government.

Now, with Kim Jong-un recalling Trump as the man who left him at the altar at Hanoi – not to mention the former US president’s tendency to overreact – and the Yoon administration lacking the diplomatic backchannel to North Korea that Moon had, tensions may persist for years and even enter a dangerous new phase.