November 5, 2025
SEOUL – North Korea appears willing to engage in talks with the United States despite the North’s silence during last week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings in South Korea, Seoul’s intelligence agency told lawmakers Thursday.
According to Reps. Park Sun-won of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea and Lee Seong-kweun of the main opposition People Power Party — executive secretaries of the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee — the National Intelligence Service reported in a closed-door briefing that multiple signs point to Pyongyang preparing for possible dialogue with Washington.
“Although a North Korea-US summit during APEC did not materialize, the NIS said that various indications suggest Pyongyang has been preparing behind the scenes for talks with the US,” Lee told reporters after the session.
“(According to the NIS) Pyongyang has been analyzing the policy tendencies of the US administration’s working-level officials, and subtle changes have been detected in its rhetoric as a nuclear-armed state,” he added.
He added that the agency also detected signs that Pyongyang “carefully weighed” whether to allow Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui’s visit to Russia, taking into account the possibility of dialogue with Washington. US President Donald Trump last week expressed his willingness to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during his Asia tour.
Choe has been a key figure in Pyongyang’s negotiations with Washington, having played leading roles in the 2018 Singapore and 2019 Hanoi summits. But during the APEC events, she was in Russia for diplomatic talks — a move widely seen at the time as a sign that the North was not yet ready for a meeting with the US.
The NIS reportedly assessed that if talks resume, they are likely to take place sometime after next March — following the annual South Korea-US combined military exercise — with Pyongyang expected to hold a military parade around the same period.
The agency also observed that Pyongyang continues to restrict contact with South Korea, including instructing overseas missions to avoid engaging with Korean groups and to maintain differentiated responses to Seoul and Washington, according to Lee.
Rep. Park added that the NIS reported Kim Jong-un’s health condition appears stable, saying, “Although he is known to have underlying health issues, he has been traveling between Pyongyang and other provinces and attending multiple events without noticeable difficulty, indicating no major health problems.”
