Promise of ‘exciting’ summit raises hopes of real peace

Since last year, after the leaders of the two Koreas first set it in motion, a strong momentum of conciliation and engagement has eased the tensions over the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s nuclear issue. True, since last year’s historic meeting with DPRK top leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore, US President Donald Trump has been under growing pressure at home, as critics say the meeting produced little of substance. And Kim had just begun to show a little impatience that his signaled change of focus from the development of nuclear weapons to economic development had not been met with accommodative actions from Washington until his request for a second meeting was met.

Dialogue between the two long antagonistic countries is clearly the way to put an end to their acrimony. So the fact that both sides have shown patience and good faith offers some reassurance that their gettogether was not just a flash-in-the-pan meeting-of-minds and that fresh impetus can be attained in their upcoming face-to-face talks.

But concrete outcomes from their meeting — due to take place in Hanoi, Vietnam, next week — will be crucial to keep the process of engagement on track and moving forward.

It is to be hoped, therefore, that Trump’s remark on Tuesday that he had “no pressing time schedule” for results on denuclearization are an acceptance that denuclearization will be a step-by-step, tit-for-tat process rather than a bid to exert pressure on Pyongyang by suggesting Washington can play a longer game.

Admittedly, his prediction that it would be “very exciting” suggests that something is in the works, with the possibility of a peace deal being mooted. Which would certainly be a historic achievement, and a very welcome one at that. The use-by date on the armistice that brought a cessation to the fighting on the peninsula in 1953 should have expired long ago with a final peace settlement.

Yet it is also to be hoped that by saying he is in “no rush”, he does not intend to drag the process out and keep the bad blood simmering so that Washington can continue to claim there is a threat from Pyongyang as justification for its overbearing military presence in the region and for housing its missile defense systems in the Republic of Korea and Japan.

Whatever he might have meant, however, there are expectations that next week’s meeting will reward the efforts of the international community, notably the ROK and China, to end the antagonism between the US and the DPRK through conciliation.

Given the complexity of the DPRK nuclear issue, it is unrealistic to anticipate the goal of denuclearization can be met through a couple of high-level meetings. But it is surely not too much to hope the two sides can keep the denuclearization ball visibly moving with some tangible give and take.