Jung Yeondu, Chief Nuclear Envoy, to Visit U.S. on 24th... to Meet Allison Hooker, Key Figure in Trump’s First-Term North Korea Team

Jung Yeondu, Director-General of the Foreign Policy Strategy and Intelligence Bureau at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Chief Negotiator for North Korea's Nuclear Negotiations), will visit Washington, D.C., in the United States from the 24th to the 27th.

Jung Yeondu, Director-General of the Foreign Strategy and Intelligence Bureau at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Chief Negotiator for North Korea's Nuclear Talks)

According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the 23rd, during this visit to the United States, Director-General Jung is scheduled to hold meetings with figures from the U.S. administration, including Allison Hooker, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Thomas DiNanno, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, and Michael George DeSombre, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. He will also meet with key figures from academia.

This is the first time Director-General Jung, who took office in December last year, is traveling to the United States. In particular, he has a prior connection with Under Secretary Hooker, as they met several times in 2018 during the first Trump administration, when U.S.-North Korea negotiations were underway. At that time, Jung was head of the Task Force on North Korean Nuclear Diplomacy, and Hooker was the White House National Security Council (NSC) Senior Director for Korea. Kevin Kim, who served as Charg d'Affaires ad interim at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul and took part in the North Korea negotiating team at the working level, is also reported to have joined as an aide to Under Secretary Hooker, making it likely that he will naturally cross paths with Director-General Jung during the visit.

An official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, "Director-General Jung plans to share assessments on the recent situation on the Korean Peninsula with U.S. counterparts and to exchange a wide range of views on Korean Peninsula issues, based on the joint fact sheet from the Korea-U.S. summit meeting."

The joint fact sheet released after the summit between President Lee Jaemyung and U.S. President Donald Trump in November last year stated that "the two leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the complete denuclearization of North Korea and to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, and pledged to cooperate to implement the 2018 Singapore U.S.-North Korea summit joint statement." It also included language that "the two leaders agreed to closely coordinate on North Korea policy and urged North Korea to return to meaningful dialogue and to comply with its international obligations, including abandoning its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ballistic missile programs."

Meanwhile, since the 19th, North Korea has been holding its 9th Party Congress, the country's largest political event, and as of the third day of the schedule, it has not issued any separate messages toward South Korea or the United States.