Promise and uncertainty on the Korean Peninsula

Remarkably, at a moment of rare highlevel diplomatic breakthroughs with North Korea, there is more mystery about the future of the Korean Peninsula than just a few months ago when tensions rose and fears of US military action mounted.

North and South Korea will hold their first summit in more than a decade on April 27. Though a Trump-Kim summit is expected to occur in May, the agenda and the date are uncertain. In the case of US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un there still has been no public, direct North Korean confirmation of the summit invite.

Of course, the key objectives of both summits are obvious. South Korean President Moon Jae-in seeks reconciliation with North Korea and to build cooperation in social, political and perhaps economic spheres. Both Moon and Trump prioritize denuclearization. But how to get there? And can the two proceed in parallel?

There is no sense of either the process nor content of diplomacy. The Xi-Kim meeting restored China to center stage, but other key Northeast Asian players – Japan and Russia – have been pushed to the sidelines. Though UN Security Council Resolutions 2375 and 2397 reiterated support for the Six-Party Talks and the September 2005 Joint Statement for Denuclearization, Trump disdains all US diplomacy that preceded him and has dismissed the Six-Party Talks.

Moreover, the highly unusual step of agreeing to a summit before diplomatic talks have framed the issues and outlined an agreement raises the stakes. There are two possible scenarios: Trump and Kim could try to negotiate the outlines of a deal and leave it to their respective senior working-level staffs to finalize the details. Or more likely, Trump and Kim could agree on the key principles of a deal – for example denuclearization in exchange for economic aid, security guarantees and a peace treaty – and give a mandate to officials on both sides to flesh out an agreement.

However, the past is littered with failed deals with North Korea. In the cases of both North-South diplomacy and North Korean denuclearization efforts, there is a rich legacy of well-conceived agreements left gathering dust as a result of North Korean obstinacy.

Two previous North-South summits produced only embarrassing failure, despite Seoul lavishing substantial economic benefits on Pyongyang. There have been a 1991 North-South reconciliation accord and a 1992 denuclearization agreement which are solid documents that should be the foundation for the upcoming summit, but there is no indication this will be the case. Moon has limited planning to a few senior Blue House advisors, cutting out his Foreign Ministry. The agenda and desired outcome is unclear, though Moon has suggested there might be a “denuclearization declaration.” The US is in an unusual position, with key officials missing, a White House in turmoil and a new secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, awaiting confirmation.

If Kim tells Trump he wants to negotiate away his nukes for economic and security benefits, the US at present is uncertain about what a diplomatic process should look like nor who should be included in it. If not SixParty, perhaps four-party talks: US, China, South Korea and North Korea. To turn the UN armistice into a peace treaty, all four parties would need to be involved.

But what of a nuclear agreement? Here again, the US would be foolish to ignore the previous agreement, despite the failure to realize it. The September 2005 Joint Statement offered a comprehensive solution and was based on the assumption of strong mutual distrust. Pyongyang would receive energy and economic aid and investment, security guarantees, US-North Korea normalization of relations and a peace regime on the peninsula. But movement in each of these areas would be sequenced on progress in dismantling North Korea’s nuclear weapons, in an action-for-action process to build trust. That accord fell apart in 2007 when Pyongyang refused the transparency requirements of challenge inspections. And given the increased numbers of missiles and nuclear weapons, verification of any agreement would be still more challenging now. But if Kim is serious about denuclearization, verification will be the test of it.

Starting negotiations from a blank slate would be a waste of time and effort. But whatever is agreed to, China will be critical to any success. Beijing would be wise to begin dialogue now with the previous Six-Party members, especially the US, to begin to solve these mysteries of how to proceed and to focus on the lessons learned from previous failures.