Is North Korea preparing for a diplomatic offensive under Kim Jong Un?

On 22 and 23 January 2025, the Supreme People’s Assembly, North Korea’s legislative body, met in Pyongyang. Chairman of the State Affairs Commission Kim Jong Un did not attend, and this year’s budget was unremarkable, but there was one unexpected point of interest: personnel changes in the Foreign Affairs Committee.

The Foreign Affairs Committee, like the Budget Committee and the Legislation Committee, is a small group established within the Supreme People’s Assembly. This committee was revived in April 2017 for the first time in 19 years, based on the provision of the Socialist Constitution that “the Presidium [Standing Committee] of the Supreme People’s Assembly may have committees to assist it in its work”.

The chairman was Ri Su-yong, vice-chairman of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea. He was the permanent representative to the United Nations office in Geneva and ambassador to Switzerland, and supported Kim Jong Un’s life as a student abroad. The other seven members of the committee included Ri Son-gwon, chairman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland (CPRF), who served as the liaison with South Korea, and Kim Kye-gwan, first vice-minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who was known as the commander of US policy.

In April 2019, immediately after the failure of the second North Korea-United States summit in Hanoi, there was some reorganisation, with Choe Son-hui, who would later become foreign minister, joining the Committee. In April 2020, Kim Hyung-jun, who had served as ambassador to Russia, replaced Ri Su-yong as chairman of the committee. Although diplomacy was stagnant due to the Covid-19 pandemic, appointments were made, and in September 2021, Kim Song-nam, director of the International Department, was appointed chairman, a position he holds to this day.

This time, three new members joined the committee. The first, Kang Yun-sok, vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the Supreme People’s Assembly, met with delegations from youth organisations and the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office of Russia during their visit to North Korea last year, and also laid a wreath at the “Friendship Tower”, which commemorates the People’s Volunteer Army’s participation in the Korean War.

There have been very few reports on the activities of the second member, Jong Myong-su, Vice-Premier of the Cabinet, but he was reported to have visited the Vietnamese embassy in Pyongyang with Kang Yun-sok and others to pay condolences following the passing of the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, Nguyen Phu Trong. These reports indicate that the two were given the titles of members of the Foreign Affairs Committee as liaisons to friendly countries.

The third, Yun Jong-ho, is a shoo-in for the list, as he has been serving as the Minister of External Economic Relations since January 2021. Although North Korea is deepening its cooperation with the Putin administration, China still has an overwhelming presence in foreign economic affairs.

Even with the involvement of these three, it is still too early to speak of a “shift toward the US”. Nevertheless, this personnel change can be seen as a sign that the Kim Jong Un administration will be more active in diplomacy, being the first personnel change in the Foreign Affairs Committee in three years and four months since September 2021.

This is reminiscent of the actions taken when North Korea attempted to shift to a dialogue offensive, when Kim Jong Un suddenly called for dialogue with South Korea in his 2018 New Year’s address. His sister, Kim Yo-jong, deputy department director of the Central Committee and president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly, was sent to the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. In June of the same year, the first summit between North Korea and the US was held in Singapore.

At the time, US President Donald Trump expressed his anger at Kim Jong Un for continuing to conduct nuclear and missile tests, calling him “Rocket Man”, while Kim Jong Un himself criticised Trump as a “mentally deranged US dotard”. This was a time when the prevailing view was that the situation on the Korean Peninsula was in a critical state.

Kim Jong Un launched the dialogue offensive on New Year’s Day 2018, but there were some signs before that. The first sign was the sudden revival of the Foreign Affairs Committee in April 2017. On the surface, it appeared to be “out of control”, but it also meant that the Kim regime was beginning to prepare for diplomacy. Immediately after the revival, the Committee sent a “letter of protest” to the US House of Representatives.

North Korean media only briefly reported that Trump had been re-elected as US president, with no commentary. Even after the collapse of negotiations with the US, North Korea has avoided openly criticising Trump. It is likely that North Korea is now carefully watching Trump’s every move.

In senior personnel changes under the Kim Jong Un administration, only the names of those who have been “by-elected” are made public, and the names of those who have been dismissed are often not made public. This makes it difficult to get a full picture of the organisation, but the new Foreign Affairs Committee is expected to include Choe Son-hui, who was in charge of practical matters in negotiations with the US in Singapore and Hanoi.

The Committee is basically positioned as a counterpart to the foreign affairs committees established in the parliaments of other countries, so it is not possible for us to determine the direction of North Korean diplomacy based on this personnel change alone. However, the Kim Jong Un government looks prepared for a diplomatic offensive in focusing on strengthening friendly relations with Russia while keeping an eye on where the US is going.

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