Moon’s ‘last chance’ to reach peace goal
President Moon Jae-in plans to use his final year in office to reach an “irreversible peace” on the Korean peninsula, and will seek help in salvaging one of his policy priorities at a summit next week with US President Joe Biden.
Moon said yesterday in a speech marking the start of the final year of his single, five-year term that now was “time to take action”.
He added: “I will consider the remaining one year of my term as my last chance to move forward from an incomplete peace to an irreversible peace.”
His remarks come before his meeting with Biden on May 21 at the White House, where North
Korea will be high on the agenda. Moon is set to become the second leader of a foreign country to hold face-to-face talks with Biden since he took office, following an April summit with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga.
“Also, we will closely coordinate our North Korea policy to restore inter-Korean dialogue and that between the US and North Korea,” Moon said.
He called Biden’s new North Korea policy “flexible” and “practical”, adding that Washington closely consulted Seoul during the formation of the new approach.
The Biden administration has indicated it could be ready to ease sanctions in exchange for steps by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to freeze, cap and wind down his atomic arsenal. That could help
Kim fix an economy that has only grown smaller since he took power about a decade ago.
Moon has seen his role as an intermediary between Washington and Pyongyang diminish after he helped broker the first summit between then US President Donald Trump and Kim in June 2018.
Since then, North Korea has rebuffed Moon’s attempts at rapprochement, labelled him meddlesome and last year destroyed an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border that had been the most visible symbol of Moon’s quest to seek warmer ties with his neighbour.
Moon has been pressing the United States to resume nuclear talks that sputtered under Trump, without producing any concrete steps to wind down Kim’s arsenal.