Korean Olympic deal a hopeful sign
Pact on North’s participation in Pyeongchang Games may lead to Moon, Kim meeting
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA— It’s been more than a decade since the leaders of the two Koreas have held a summit. Could it happen now?
South Korean President Moon Jaein told reporters Wednesday that he remains open to a meeting with North Korea’s leader, if it would improve the strained relations between their two countries and help resolve the global standoff over the North’s nuclear weapons development.
It’s not a new position for Moon, who took office in May, but it took on new meaning coming one day after high-level officials from the two Koreas held a rare and apparently successful meeting, agreeing on the North’s participation in the upcoming Winter Olympics in the South.
A meeting between the two leaders isn’t likely in the immediate future. The North’s Kim Jong Un hasn’t met any foreign leader since he succeeded his father in 2011, and attitudes have hardened since the only two previous Korean summits in 2000 and 2007, when South Korean presidents were pursuing a “Sunshine Policy” of trying to win over the North through engagement and aid.
Moon is a liberal who favours a dip- lomatic solution to the nuclear issue and whose election ended nine years of conservative rule. He was chief-ofstaff to former president Roh Moohyun, who held the last summit with Kim’s father in 2007.
Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Dongguk University in Seoul, said a meeting during Moon’s fiveyear term is possible.
“Kim has never met any foreign leader, so it would be meaningful for him to make his first summit a meeting between Koreans,” Koh said.
During the televised news conference in Seoul, Moon said “I keep myself open to any meeting including a summit,” and that he would push for further talks and co-operation after Tuesday’s meeting.
“To have a summit, some condi- tions must be established,” he said. “I think a certain level of success must be guaranteed.” He didn’t set any specific conditions.
Moon called North Korea’s participation in next month’s Olympics “very desirable,” but said inter-Korean relations cannot be improved without progress on the nuclear issue. He warned that the North would face harsher international sanctions and pressure if it resorts to new provocations, adding that “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is the path to peace and our goal.”
Under the deal struck Tuesday at the border village of Panmunjom, North Korea will send officials, athletes, cheerleaders, journalists and others to the Olympics in Pyeongchang. South Korean Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon said Wednesday he expects the delegation will include 400 to 500 people. The accord stipulates the two Koreas will actively co-operate in the Olympics to “enhance the prestige of the Korean people.”
The two sides also agreed to hold military talks, and North Korea said it had recently restored a military hotline with the South, the second reopening of an inter-Korean communication channel in about a week, according to South Korean officials. All major communications had been shut down because of the tensions over the North’s nuclear program.
The accords, reached at the first meeting between the rival Koreas in about two years, were widely viewed as a big step following a year of escalating tension over Kim’s rapidly advancing nuclear and missile programs. Last year, Kim and U.S. President Donald Trump exchanged crude insults as North Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test and three tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles that put the U.S. within its range.
John Delury, a China and North Korea expert at Yonsei University in Seoul, cautioned that the process is fragile, but said Tuesday’s talks are opening up new diplomatic possibilities, in striking contrast to last year.
“It’s still very early in this process, and we have to see how much momentum it acquires, but so far this year is definitely getting off to a very different start,” he said.