SEOUL • Headline-grabbing summits between the leaders of North Korea and the United States will be off the agenda for some time, analysts say, after US President-elect Joe Biden characterised Mr Kim Jong Un a "thug", in contrast to Mr Donald Trump's declarations of love.

Mr Trump's bizarre diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang veered from mutual insults and threats of war to "love letters" and the first ever meeting between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader. The two mercurial men met twice more after their landmark summit in Singapore in 2018, but with no progress in denuclearisation efforts.

Now Mr Biden's victory heralds a return to more standard diplomatic norms, analysts say, with his administration wanting to see tangible steps towards denuclearisation and progress at a series of working-level negotiations before any made-for-TV summits. On the campaign trail, Mr Biden had said he would not meet Mr Kim without pre-conditions and accused Mr Trump of "emboldening" the North Korean leader.

In the final presidential debate last month, the Democrat denounced Mr Trump for befriending Mr Kim, likening the North Korean leader to Adolf Hitler. "He's talked about his good buddy, who's a thug," Mr Biden said of Mr Kim. "That's like saying we had a good relationship with Hitler before he invaded Europe."

For its part, while Pyongyang's state media has yet to mention the US election or the result, it has previously excoriated Mr Biden, with the official Korean Central News Agency calling him a "rabid dog" that must be "beaten to death".

According to analysts, North Korea saw in Mr Trump's unorthodox approach its best chance of securing a deal that would allow it to keep at least some of its nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles, both of which are banned under UN Security Council resolutions.

Pyongyang will be "slightly peeved by the change in leadership", said former Central Intelligence Agency analyst Soo Kim. "The regime is aware the prospects of a top-level meeting with a US leader are going to be slim now," she added. "We're expecting a more principled, systematic approach to Pyongyang. This likely means less ad hoc interactions and some method to dealing with Kim."

North Korea despises Mr Biden for his role in the Obama administration, which adopted a policy of "strategic patience", refusing to engage with Pyongyang unless it offered concessions first, or until the regime collapsed from within.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE