The U.S. and North Korea are resuming working-levels talks on the North’s nuclear and missile programs. Experts believe both sides will have to make concessions to get any kind of deal.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The U.S. and North Korea have restarted nuclear talks. The two sides held preliminary talks today in Sweden. The main meeting is tomorrow. These are the first working-level negotiations since February, when President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met in Vietnam. That summit broke down. There was no deal. As NPR’s Anthony Kuhn reports now from Seoul, there is pressure on both sides to come up with some sort of agreement.
ANTHONY KUHN, BYLINE: Analysts believe that negotiators will have to begin by picking up the pieces of the deal that fell apart in Hanoi. Then, Kim Jong Un demanded the lifting of key economic sanctions in return for shutting down North Korea’s main nuclear complex at Yongbyon. North Korea expert Joel Wit at the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C., says a new bargain will have to involve some variation on that deal.
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