Sources: Trump wants credit for N. Korea talks
SEOUL — Even before he was elected South Korea’s president eight months ago, Moon Jae-in was vowing to take the “driver’s seat” in global efforts to deal with North Korea.
But as the inter-Korean talks have shown this week, it’s clearly Kim Jong Un who’s steering, although Moon could fairly claim to be riding shotgun. It’s Kim who’s decided when the Koreas will talk and what they will talk about.
As for President Donald Trump? Well, he could be said to be in the back, going along for the ride.
As South Korea presses ahead with efforts to bring a large North Korean delegation to the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang next month, it is willingly agreeing to North Korea’s demands.
But Trump, a former businessman who prides himself on being a masterful negotiator, is claiming — and getting — most of the credit for the sudden burst of Olympics-related diplomacy between the two Koreas.
During a Jan. 4 phone call in which the South Korean leader briefed the American president on the plans for talks with North Korea, Trump asked Moon to publicly give him the credit for creating the environment for the talks, according to people familiar with the conversation.
(In these conversations, Trump calls his counterpart “Jae-in” — an unimaginable informality in Korean business etiquette. Moon calls Trump “Mr. President.”)
Later that night, Trump tweeted that the talks wouldn’t be happening “if I wasn’t firm, strong and willing to commit our total ‘might’ against the North.”
At a news conference six days later, Moon agreed that Trump deserved “huge credit” for the talks.
Moon is trying to manipulate Trump into effectively undermining his own policy: putting pressure on North Korea, said one former official, asking for anonymity to protect sources still in government.
“Kim Jong Un is setting the agenda here,” the former official said. “His purpose is to use these talks to show the world that he’s OK and to make the sanctions effort lose steam.”
Since taking office last May, Moon has repeatedly made overtures to North Korea but Kim consistently rebuffed them all - until New Year’s Day, that is. Then, just weeks after declaring that his nuclear weapons program was complete, the North Korean leader called for “detente” with the South.
This prompted a flurry of activity in the South, including getting Trump to agree in that Jan. 4 phone call to postpone joint military drills until after the Olympics, to avoid antagonizing North Korea.
Further evidence of Kim’s agenda-setting: The first item for discussion this week involved the performances of a North Korean propaganda orchestra known for numbers such as “Our Comrade Kim Jong Un.” Then came the inclusion of a 240-member cheering squad known as an “army of beauties” because these squads have previously been made up entirely of attractive young women — and have been immensely popular in the South.