North Korea’s former top nuclear envoy, Kim Yong-chol, accompanied leader Kim Jong-un to an art performance, state news agency KCNA said on Monday, signalling that the former spymaster is alive and remains a force in the power structure.
Sunday’s appearance followed conflicting reports of shake-ups in the team that led engagement with the U.S. last year, only for nuclear talks to collapse after Mr. Kim and President Donald Trump failed to strike a pact at a February summit.
Art performance
KCNA named Mr. Kim Yong-chol as the 10th person among a group of 12 “leading officials” who accompanied Mr. Kim and his wife, Ri Sol-ju, to an amateur art performance by wives of officers in the North Korean Army on Sunday.
On Friday, South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo had said Mr. Kim Yong-chol, the leader’s right-hand man and a counterpart of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo before the failed summit, had been sent to a labour camp, citing an unidentified North Korean source.
Asked on Sunday about the last U.S. contact with Mr. Kim Yong-chol and North Korea in general, Mr. Pompeo declined to answer, saying: “We conduct our negotiations in private.”
Asked about reports of a “shake-up” of North Korea’s negotiating team in a May 5 interview with ABC News, Mr. Pompeo said it did appear that his future counterpart would be somebody else, adding “But we don’t know that for sure.”
He said: “Just as President Trump gets to decide who his negotiators will be, Chairman Kim will get to make his own decisions who he asks to have these discussions.”
As Mr. Kim’s point man for the nuclear talks, Mr. Kim Yong-chol was stripped of a key party post in apparent censure for the summit’s collapse, a South Korean lawmaker said in April.
In April, an official photograph from a session of North Korea’s legislature showed Mr. Kim Yong-chol standing behind Mr. Kim, but he did not accompany Mr. Kim on his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin later that month.
