Rival Koreas resume peace talks
Peace-building efforts a long, rocky road
SEOUL: North and South Korea resumed senior-level peace talks yesterday that Seoul sees as an important step in building trust with Pyongyang amid a US-led diplomatic push to persuade the North to give up its nuclear weapons.
The meeting at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom follows a meeting in New York between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and senior North Korean envoy Kim Yong-chol where they discussed a potential summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
American delegations are also meeting with North Koreans in Panmunjom and Singapore as part of efforts to confirm the summit that may take place on June 12 in Singapore.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry said the Korean senior officials during the morning session of their meeting exchanged views on setting up a liaison office in the North Korean border town of Kaesong and arranging a joint event to commemorate the “June 15 Declaration” for peace adopted after the first inter-Korean summit in 2000. The North said it agreed that the liaison office should be established as quickly as possible and proposed the event celebrating the June 15 declaration to be held in the South, the ministry said.
South Korea also proposed military talks on reducing tensions across their heavily armed border and Red Cross talks to resume reunions of families separated by the 1950-53 Korean War, the ministry said. There could also be discussions about fielding combined teams in some sports at the Asian Games in August.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who met with Mr Kim twice in the past two months, has said progress in inter-Korean reconciliation will be a crucial part of international efforts to resolve the nuclear standoff with North Korea because Pyongyang wouldn’t give up its nuclear program unless it feels its security is assured.
“We will hold discussions with the North so that we can implement the agreements between the two leaders with pace and without hitches and also create a positive atmosphere for the leaders’ summit between North Korea and the United States,” Seoul’s Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon told reporters before the meeting.
Ri Son-gwon, chairman of the North’s agency that deals with inter-Korean affairs, told Mr Cho at the start of the meeting that the rivals should work on building “trust and consideration for each other” to carry out the agreements of the recent interKorean summits.
The talks could get contentious. North Korea in recent weeks has repeatedly criticized US-South Korea military drills and is also demanding the return of 12 North Korean restaurant workers who arrived in the South in 2016. South Korea has maintained that the women settled in South Korea willingly but is now reviewing the circumstances surrounding their arrival following a media report suggesting at least some were brought to the South against their will.
After Mr Moon and Mr Kim met for their first summit at Panmunjom on April 27, they spoke of vague aspirations for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula and permanent peace, which Seoul has tried to sell as a meaningful breakthrough that increases the chances of successful nuclear negotiations between Mr Trump and Mr Kim.
But relations chilled when North Korea canceled an inter-Korean meeting and threatened to walk away from the summit with Mr Trump because of the South’s participation in regular military exercises with the United States and comments from US officials. Mr Trump cancelled the summit, then said it may still take place, shortly before Mr Kim and Mr Moon met again.
Mr Ri seemed irritated when asked whether North Korea sees its grievances as resolved.
The head-spinning ups and downs of the “on-off-and-now-maybe” summit between Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is diverting attention from the real choice facing the US president: if he remains inflexibly committed to eliminating Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and missile programme by the end of his first term, he will fail.
Contrary to the sky-high expectations being set, rollback of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programmes will not happen anytime soon because — after investing so much blood, sweat, and treasure to develop operational nuclear weapons over the past 25 years — the North will not give them up quickly or easily.
Mr Trump’s promises of huge benefits if Mr Kim turns over his nuclear weapons first are exactly the kind of rhetoric the North mocks. I was a member of US government delegations involved in talks with Pyongyang during the Clinton administration and I took part in meetings with North Korean officials as a private citizen from 2005 to 2010. I often heard the North, with unintended humour, deride US demands as asking the North to “pull its pants down” and simply trust Washington.
Still, a Singapore summit can succeed — if Mr Trump sees these talks as the start of a process, not the end. Perhaps recognition of this reality is why negotiations now appear to be heading for a “phased approach” to denuclearisation. Mr Trump and Mr Kim may be considering a “much more for much more” deal. This means in exchange for a big down payment from the United States in the form of sanctions relief, political legitimacy and security, the more the North will give — and quicker. This makes me hopeful.
But with all things Mr Kim and Mr Trump, nothing is certain — as there is likely an intense struggle within the White House for the president’s heart and mind. Newly appointed National Security Adviser John Bolton believes talks with North Korea are useless; in contrast, recently installed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is working hard by travelling to Pyongyang and meeting with North Korean officials in New York to make something happen.
If Mr Bolton’s view prevails, then there is only one way for Washington to ensure early and complete denuclearisation — force Pyongyang into compliance. This requires unrelenting diplomatic, financial and military pressure and threats that either grinds the North Korean leadership into submission, or topples Kim Jong-un and his cabal from power with the hope that a “friendly” leadership emerges.
Both are bad bets.
Expecting the North to crumble and submit to US demands is, for anyone who knows North Korea and its history, pure folly. For decades the North has demonstrated the ability to endure incredible hardship (over a million people died of starvation in the 1990s). It has confounded China, Russia, Japan and the United States because the regime’s very legitimacy ultimately rests on its ability to skillfully defy the demands of larger powers, often playing one off the other. For Mr Kim, capitulation would be tantamount to regime suicide.
Regime change — which could happen slowly via sanctions and political isolation or quickly through covert or overt military action — is also problematic. During George W Bush’s first term, Washington pursued the slow approach with Mr Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il, and the fast approach with Saddam Hussein. History proved that neither was particularly successful.
Most importantly, those advocating unrelenting pressure are making a wager that high-stakes tension will not cause us to stumble into war by miscalculation. A deadly exchange of fire along Korea’s Demilitarised Zone, a collision of naval vessels or a missile test gone wrong — all of which have happened — could, given the aggressive personalities of Mr Kim and Mr Trump, rapidly escalate into further devastating conflict.
If early and complete denuclearisation is not in the cards and if forcing North Korean compliance increases the risk of catastrophic war, Mr Trump is left with one remaining path to complete denuclearisation — the North Korean leadership must voluntarily, and of its own free will, give up its nuclear weapons.
True denuclearisation means creating a very different political and security environment so that the regime no longer views its long-standing, adversarial policies or weapons as necessary. No piece of paper, no promise, no assurance from the United States will suffice. This is a daunting task — and will take years. Think about how the Vietnam-US relationship has changed since the end of that war.
The Bolton camp will argue that giving the North more time will create a more powerful, provocative North Korea; this view rests on an unproven assumption — that Kim Jong-un seeks to dominate the peninsula, not just preserve his regime. But what happens to North Korea a decade or so into the future is uncertain. Others raise the danger of a North Korea with nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, but discount that deterrence is working on the Korean peninsula — Mr Kim knows North Korea would cease to exist if it struck America, South Korea or Japan first.
These are tough choices. If and when Mr Trump and Mr Kim do meet, there will be an impasse. Mr Trump wants denuclearisation sooner; Mr Kim, later. How long will an impatient US leader wait and how much will he give in return? Let’s hope the president listens more to Mr Pompeo, not Mr Bolton; otherwise, we will be right back to where we were in 2017 — more missile and nuclear tests, increased bombast, and an even greater chance of war.