Why the inter-korean meet has ignited anxieties
North Korean leader Kim Jongun’s peace offensive has put both South Korea and the US on the defensive
The summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un takes place today — the same day China’s President Xi Jinping will host Prime Minister Narendra Modi. While the Xi-modi informal summit is designed be a closed-door brainstorming, the inter-korean summit has the defined goal of denuclearising North Korea. It is also meant to set the stage for the first-ever summit between a sitting North Korean leader and a serving US president.
Compared to the calm, duck-paddling style in India-china diplomacy, hectic footwork in the Korean peninsula has ignited enormous enthusiasm and anxieties. A hotline between the two leaders was commissioned on August 20. A day later, Kim announced his decision to stop all nuclear and missile tests, and to close test sites. Such unilateral concessions from a trigger-happy Kim were described as a “meaningful step forward” and a “big progress” by Moon and Trump. While sceptics allude to North Korea’s track record of similar pledges in 1994, 2005, 2007 and 2012 not fructifying and believe that Kim is bluffing, enthusiasts are celebrating this as a victory of Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy that may see him go down in history for having finally resolved the Korean nuclear crisis.
Meanwhile, Kim’s deft nuclear diplomacy has earned him enormous visibility. His getting the royal treatment during his March 25-27 visit to Beijing could be the sign of things to come. Kim hosted Mike Pompeo, Trump’s CIA director, over Easter holidays. In this hype, Kim has said nothing about giving up nuclear weapons or stopping tests of medium range missiles. But given his incessant testing of nukes and missiles, and his verbal blitzkrieg last year, his halting of nuclear and missile tests is being labelled as major achievement for the Trump administration.
Having achieved his robust nuclear deterrence , Kim wants to draw political dividends from it. The plenary session of the Workers’ Party on “policy issues in a new stage” last Friday marked a shift in Kim’s “byongjin” (or dual push) policy of simultaneously pursuing nuclear weapons and economic development. Compared to “juche” (or self-reliance) policy of his grandfather and father, “byongjin” had been the buzzword ever since Kim took over.
Kim’s peace offensive has put both Seoul and Washington on the defensive. Pyongyang, that has been demanding withdrawal of US forces from the Korean peninsula, has also not reacted to Moon’s assertion that this issues was not on the table. Kim continues to hold his cards carefully, fuelling curiosity among his adversaries, which now defines his nerveracking adventurous nuclear diplomacy. Blaise Pascal aptly said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Even Thomas Hardy also speaks about the merit of being “far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife”. I wonder if we have noticed that being lonely is not synonymous with being alone. Loneliness is often in reaction to something unpleasant that we encounter, or an experience that has filled us with bitterness. As a result, we like to withdraw into