Foreign Ministry overhauls North Korea office to focus on strategy

Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul speaks during a press briefing at the Foreign Ministry building in Jongno District on Thursday. [YONHAP]

The Foreign Ministry will replace the Office of Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs with the Office of Strategy and Intelligence.

The newly formed Office of Strategy and Intelligence will focus on foreign policy intelligence gathering, with three new units created under its wing for international and cybersecurity, intelligence and diplomatic strategy, the Foreign Ministry announced late Thursday. The Office of Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs will be downgraded to the new Strategy office’s fourth unit.

The downsizing of the bureau in charge of North Korean nuclear affairs comes 18 years after it was first established.

“The new Office of Strategy and Intelligence will serve the function of assisting our foreign policy to respond strategically and nimbly in line with changes in the geopolitical environment,” Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul said during a briefing late Thursday. “This organizational restructuring means that work on the Korean Peninsula is no longer limited to North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats, but must comprehensively consider various issues such as cybersecurity and financial sanctions that directly or indirectly affect the North Korean nuclear issue.”

The Office of Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs was launched as a temporary office in 2006 to respond to six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear issue. It became a standing body of the Foreign Ministry in 2011. The director general of the office served as South Korea’s chief negotiator regarding North Korean diplomacy and has since shared the ups and downs of inter-Korean and North Korea-United States relations.

In 2018, when the meeting between South Korea, North Korea and the U.S. was in operation, Lee Do-hoon, then director general of the Office of Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs, frequently communicated with the U.S. Special Representative for North Korea and also worked on North Korean nuclear issues at meetings in Singapore and Hanoi.

As dialogue with North Korea was cut off following the collapse of the North Korea-U.S. summit in Hanoi in 2019 and the Covid-19 pandemic, the scope of the work of the office was significantly reduced, even as talented figures within the ministry flocked to join the office.

At the same time, the Foreign Ministry reached a consensus that there was a need to overcome placing North Korean issues at the center of all diplomatic discussions.

Under the restructuring, the new Office of Strategy and Intelligence will be in charge of gathering and analyzing intelligence to build foreign policy strategies, similar to the Bureau of Intelligence and Research in the U.S. Department of State, the Foreign Ministry said in a press release.

As part of the organizational restructuring of the Foreign Ministry, a new director position will be created to handle South Korea’s Indo-Pacific strategy. Another unit in charge of economic security issues will also be formed in the future, Cho said at the briefing.

The Foreign Ministry further reiterated its 2024 foreign policy goals with key countries, saying that it will continue to “unwaveringly” pursue denuclearization policy for North Korea, keep building a strong alliance with the U.S., strive to maintain improved relations with Japan, deal strategically with Russia and build a "sustainable" relationship with China.

BY LIM JEONG-WON [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]