This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Joseph Yun, the 30-year veteran of the US foreign service who retained quiet contacts with North Korea through the Trump administration’s turbulent first year, will retire this week – just as Washington and Pyongyang step up considerations for formal diplomatic talks.

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Yun will stand down as special representative for North Korean policy on Friday. He said his decision to retire was entirely his own but it comes at a surprising juncture, just as South Korea relayed that the North is open to direct discussions with the US.

His departure will leave the Trump administration without an envoy for engaging North Korea or an ambassador in South Korea.

Yun, a former US ambassador to Malaysia, has been the state department’s point-man for its limited contact with the North Korean government through a back channel at the nation’s diplomatic mission to the United Nations in New York. The adversaries from the Korean war do not have formal relations and the so-called “New York channel” is the primary means for conveying messages.

“One of my accomplishments has been to open the New York channel soon after the Trump administration got in,” Yun told the Associated Press. “That allowed for direct talks and direct communication. Really, there is no problem with communicating. It’s problems of engagement that have been difficult.”

Yun visited Pyongyang in June to secure the release of US college student Otto Warmbier, who had been imprisoned for 17 months for stealing a propaganda poster. Warmbier died days after his repatriation.

Yun has been frustrated by North Korea’s reluctance to release the remaining Americans held in North Korea and discuss its nuclear weapons program, which Donald Trump has threatened to dismantle by force if necessary.

A state department spokeswoman, Heather Nauert, said Yun retired for personal reasons, which the diplomat confirmed. The secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, “has reluctantly accepted his decision and wished him well”, Nauert said.

“We are sorry to see him retire but our diplomatic efforts regarding North Korea will continue based on our maximum pressure campaign to isolate the DPRK until it agrees to begin credible talks toward a denuclearized Korean peninsula.”

It was not immediately clear who would replace Yun or if the vacancy would be filled with a US official maintaining closer ties to Trump.

The ambassador post in South Korea has been vacant for the past year, adding to questions about the direction of US policy as Trump has vacillated between talk of war and willingness to speak directly with leader Kim Jong-un.

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A rapprochement between the two Koreas, inspired by South Korea’s recent hosting of the Winter Olympics, offers a glimmer of hope for diplomacy. During Sunday’s closing ceremony the office of the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, reported that a North Korean delegate said his country has “ample intentions of holding talks with the United States”.

Trump is determined to stop Kim’s government perfecting a nuclear-tipped missile that can strike the US mainland. On Monday, Trump responded to the North’s reported overture by saying talks will happen only “under the right conditions”.

The North has not tested a nuclear device or ballistic missile for months. But the US has pressed on with ever tougher sanctions, including a new set on the North’s shipping capabilities. Trump warned last week that if sanctions fail, the US would move to “phase two” in its pressure campaign, which could be “very rough” and “very unfortunate for the world”.

Victor Cha, a Washington-based Korea expert who had been regarded as Trump’s choice for ambassador to South Korea but was ultimately rejected, recently wrote that some administration officials were considering preventive military action against North Korea.