Washington on board with Yoon Suk-yeol's 'audacious initiative,' says Foreign Ministry

Foreign Minister Park Jin, right, and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, in their meeting in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Aug. 5. [NEWS1]

There is no rift between Washington and Seoul when it comes to a North Korea policy that would offer economic incentives for denuclearizing, the Foreign Ministry said Wednesday.

“Close consultations have been made with the United States on the ‘audacious initiative,’” said a senior official from the Foreign Ministry on Wednesday. “The U.S. said it strongly supports the objective and the direction of the initiative.”

The official was referring to a so-called “audacious initiative” by the Yoon Suk-yeol government, a plan to offer economic help to North Korea “in stages” if the regime stops the development of its nuclear weapons.

Such stages can include a provision of “active economic support measures” to the North from the initial negotiation process, according to the Yoon government. These details have been shared with Washington, Beijing and Tokyo in recent months, it said.

Whether they agreed wholly with Seoul’s initiative was less clear.

When asked Monday whether sanctions could be lifted in an early stage of negotiation with North Korea, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said it was “a complete hypothetical” question given the North’s lack of interest in dialogue.

“We’ve communicated about the initiative closely with the relevant countries,” said the senior Foreign Ministry official on Wednesday.

“We also believe that North Korea has a clear idea about the initiative, because we’ve communicated [with the North] when the foreign minister met with [North Korean] Ambassador An Kwang-il at the Asean Regional Forum recently,” said the official.

“The initiative is not about waiting around until the North comes to the negotiation table, it’s about actively creating a space where the North only has the option to come to the negotiating table for denuclearization,” said the official.

It's also not about having talks just for the sake of having talks.

"If North Korea continues its provocations on one side, and says that it wants to talk, that clearly will not be taken a sincere gesture towards denuclearization," said the official.

North Korea fired two cruise missiles toward the Yellow Sea early Wednesday, just ahead of a press conference marking President Yoon Suk-yeol's 100th day in office. The regime has fired over 30 missiles this year.

Yoon, who first mentioned the "audacious initiative" in his inauguration speech in May, highlighted the plan during the press conference Wednesday.

He said that economic support to Pyongyang could include a large-scale food program for North Korea, assistance for power generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure and projects to modernize North Korea's ports and airports for international trade.

Many of these programs would require exemptions to UN sanctions, and would be subject to discussions among UN Security Council members in the future, according to the Foreign Ministry.

BY ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]