Despite U.S. President Donald Trump's cancellation of his planned meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, statements from the two countries suggest they will not return to a confrontation mode as the world saw last year but continue dialogue to create conditions for what would be a first-ever bilateral summit.

Hours after Trump announced his pullout from a June 12 summit in Singapore, veteran North Korean nuclear negotiator Kim Kye Gwan said on Friday, "We have the intention to sit with the U.S. side to solve problem regardless of ways at any time."

Citing Trump's remarks that Washington is leaving the door open for dialogue with Pyongyang -- including the possibility of rescheduling a summit -- some U.S. experts on East Asian security say the cancellation does not mean the end of talks between the two adversaries.

[Getty/Kyodo]

"The Trump administration seems to still be open to a summit meeting. If this is true, then the decision to cancel the June 12 summit doesn't necessarily mean the end of dialogue and thus does not mean the cancellation is going to directly lead to war in the region," said Jeffrey Hornung, a political scientist at the Rand Corporation, a U.S. research organization.

"Dialogue is still possible, but most likely at lower levels," Hornung said, citing, for example, a foreign ministerial meeting on the fringes of an Asian security forum slated for early August in Singapore.

However, tensions between Washington and Pyongyang could increase partly because the administration, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Thursday evening, is looking to impose "dozens of new sanctions" on North Korea early next week.

Despite what Trump called a "missed opportunity" for the North and the world, Hornung said the cancellation would be a plus for Japan because it will create the space and time for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to ensure closer coordination with the United States and South Korea in dealing with North Korea.

The setting of the June 12 summit was led by South Korean President Moon Jae In, effectively leaving Tokyo out of the loop.

"Now is the chance to bring Japan firmly into the active diplomacy so that the three countries can cooperate in unity against North Korea's nuclear and missile challenges and prevent the North from driving wedges between them," Hornung said.

"They can also discuss how best to handle issues more appropriate to bilateral negotiations with North Korea, such as the abduction issue," he said, in reference to Pyongyang's abduction of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s.

(Jeffrey Hornung, Rand Corporation researcher)

While Kim Kye Gwan, the first vice foreign minister, claimed North Korea has made a "sincere pursuit and active efforts to end the relations of hostility and distrust," a senior White House official said "a trail of broken promises" by Pyongyang in the last weeks forced the United States to think twice about proceeding with the planned summit.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while Kim Jong Un had earlier said he "understands" routine joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea will continue, the North called off talks with the South last week because of its objection to an annual U.S.-South Korea exercise.

The official said that although Pyongyang promised Washington and Seoul that it would invite foreign officials and nuclear experts to verify Thursday's demolition of the North's only known nuclear test site, it allowed access to the site only by foreign reporters.

Moreover, a North Korean delegation failed to show up for a meeting that had been scheduled last week in Singapore with a White House team to jointly work on logistical preparations for the summit, according to the official.

"The United States has over the past week made numerous attempts to communicate with the North Koreans, but they have not responded," the official said.

(A North Korean official briefs foreign reporters before demolition of North Korean nuclear test site.)
[KCNA/Kyodo]

The first communication Washington had received from Pyongyang in a week, the official said, was a statement by Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui released Thursday.

While issuing yet another threat to cancel the summit, Choe said, "Whether the U.S. will meet us at a meeting room or encounter us at a nuclear-to-nuclear showdown is entirely dependent upon the decision and behavior of the United States."

But the biggest obstacle for Trump and Kim to actually meet, many officials and experts argue, may have been the wide gap between the two countries on how to achieve denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.

The United States has demanded that North Korea swiftly dismantle its nuclear weapons and related facilities in a complete, verifiable and irreversible way before receiving any benefits.

The North has sought "phased and synchronous measures," an incremental, action-for-action process in which Pyongyang secures concessions such as sanctions relief for each move it takes toward denuclearization.