A new dawn or false one?
Talk of peace with North Korea has people in the South wondering: Will this time be different to the past?
After 65 years in a technical state of war that has periodically descended into real conflict, Koreans on both sides of the divide are dealing with a mind-boggling prospect: Could they finally, finally, be on the brink of a cold peace?
Newspapers in South Korea and — astoundingly — in North Korea were plastered with photos of the South’s Moon Jae In and the North’s Kim Jong Un meeting on the tense border that cleaves this peninsula in two.
“No war on Korean Peninsula, complete denuclearisation, formal end to Korean War this year,” the Seoul Shinmun blared, summarising the key points of the declaration that Moon and Kim signed after their historic meeting.
In Pyongyang, the Rodong Sinmun, the mouthpiece of the ruling Workers’ Party, devoted four pages to the summit. “Historic summit opens new history of national reconciliation, peace and prosperity,” the paper declared.
The North’s Korean Central Television brought out its most authoritative anchor, Ri Chun Hee, to read the news of the agreement, complete with half an hour of footage from the summit. She even uttered the words “complete denuclearisation.” This sends a powerful message to the people of North Korea that this was a process Kim was personally invested in. It also sends a powerful message to sceptics in the outside world that this time may be, just may be, different. We have been here before. We were here in 1992, when North Korea signed a denuclearisation agreement with South Korea. Again in 1994, when North Korea signed a denuclearisation agreement with the US. And in 2005, when North Korea signed a denuclearisation agreement with its four neighbours and the US. And then there was 2012, when North Korea signed another agreement with the US.
North Korea has never stuck to any of its agreements. So perhaps the wisest course of action would be to bet that North Korea won’t abide by this one either.
Indeed, why would Kim Jong Un, the 34-year-old scion of the world’s only communist dynasty, give up a programme that is so closely intertwined with his claim on the leadership and with his security?
But there are enough differences this time to give even a sceptic pause.
For one, Kim Jong Un is a very different leader from his father. He’s an extrovert who’s not afraid to make bold gestures, whether it be firing an intercontinental ballistic missile on July 4 or inviting a surprised South Korean president to step into North Korea with him, as Kim did to Moon.
Kim called South Korea by its official name and North Korea by its South Korean name — linguistic gestures that spoke volumes about his desire to generate goodwill. He even acknowledged that North Korea’s roads and railways were far inferior to the South’s, that some North Koreans escaped, and that South Koreans had died in recent years because of North Korean attacks. These were significant admissions by North Korean standards.
For another, Kim’s rule now coincides with that of a hugely popular South Korean president — Moon’s ratings remain in the unprecedented 70s even after a year in office — who was elected with a mandate to engage with North Korea.
And then there’s the Trump factor. A cautious president who practices strategic patience might not rush headfirst into a summit with the United States’ most belligerent enemy, but an impulsive one itching with “strategic impatience” might.
This combination has put a significant dent in the standard Southern nonchalance.
After the summit, people in the South lined up to eat cold buckwheat noodles — a North Korean specialty, and Kim’s contribution to the summit dinner — and watched the scenes of Moon and Kim play on televisions and smartphones. Even some those who didn’t watch the broadcasts from the summit found cause for hope.
“I haven’t completed my military service yet, so the declaration to end the war stood out to me,” said Lee Lu Da, 24, a college student in Seoul. All South Korean men must complete at least 21 months of mandatory service before they turn 30. “After Friday’s declaration, I’m cautiously optimistic that the conscription period might be shortened,” he said.
Another millennial, just old enough to remember the first interKorean summit in 2000, found the summit scenes moving, even though he’s not a big fan of Moon.
“My dad told me I will live in unified Korea when I grow up,” said Sun Seung Bum, 25, who’s studying for the civil service exam.
“Of course, that hasn’t happened, and I didn’t have high hopes for this Sun Seung Bum summit either. But when I saw the handshake between Moon and Kim, I found it quite moving. And the words like peace and end of war resonated even with a sceptic like me.”
Of course, there were plenty of people in South Korea who criticised the agreement for being too vague. A few hundred conservatives waving South Korean and American flags took to the streets of central Seoul to protest against the agreement, and conservative politicians slammed it, too. “The inter-Korean summit was a show of fake peace,” Hong Joon Pyo, head of the Liberty Korea Party, wrote on Facebook, criticising in particular the vagueness of the clause on denuclearisation. “Moon just took dictation from Kim Jong Un to get this declaration.”
But the idea of signing a peace treaty is something that could really happen — not least because Trump has said repeatedly that he supports the idea.
In their agreement, which included a reference to denuclearisation, Moon and Kim said they would “actively cooperate to establish a permanent and solid peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.”
It said: “Bringing an end to the current unnatural state of armistice and establishing a robust peace regime on the Korean Peninsula is a historical mission that must not be delayed any further.”
Everything about the division of the Korean Peninsula is unnatural. The division began one day in 1945, when it was clear that Korea’s colonial master, Japan, having just felt the force of two American atomic bombs, was about to surrender. Two US Army colonels — one of them Dean Rusk, who would later go on to become the secretary of state — found a National Geographic map of Asia and simply drew a line across the Korean Peninsula at the 38th parallel, despite the fact that Korea had been one country for more than a thousand years. The US would administer the southern half and the Soviet Union the northern half — a temporary solution until the dust settled.
That temporary solution became permanent with the devastating war between 1950 to 1953, which solidified the division and made north and south enemies.
The Korean War finally came to a close in July 1953 when the two sides — North Korea and its Chinese backers on one side, and the United Nations Command, led by the US, on the other, signed an armistice. That agreement was to “insure a complete cessation of hostilities and of all acts of armed force in Korea until a final peaceful settlement is achieved.” Sixty-five years on, there has been no peace.
Yet even after more than 70 years, Koreans still have so much in common. This reporter has been struck in her travels to North Korea by how culturally similar Koreans remain: They ask the same prying personal questions; they laugh at the same jokes; they want their children to lead better lives than they have.
Kim appealed to this sense of being two parts of one whole at the end of his summit with Moon, highlighting their shared language, history and culture. This was a ploy by Kim to forge a nationalistic bond with Moon and create a divide between South Korea and the US. But it was also true.
The tragedy of this division is something that is often forgotten amid the nuclear weapons and threats of annihilation.
Moving towards a peace regime may allow more reunions between Korean family members separated by the divide, potentially giving brothers and sisters who haven’t seen each other in more than 65 years the opportunity to hold one another’s hands one last time.
Maybe this time will be different. Maybe.
Summit analysis A18-19