Kim was ‘sincere’ in denuclearisation talks, says former S. Korea President
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un o¢ered to give up his nuclear arsenal if America guaranteed his regime would survive, former South Korean President Moon Jae-in said in a recently released memoir.
Mr. Moon, who led South Korea for ve years from 2017, was instrumental in brokering two highprole summit meetings between Mr. Kim and thenU.S. President Donald Trump, aimed at securing Pyongyang’s denuclearisation in return for sanctions relief.
But after the second summit collapsed in 2019, diplomatic outreach was abandoned, with relations between the two Koreas now at one of their worst points in years, as Mr. Kim doubles down on weapons production and draws closer to ally Moscow.
In the memoir released on Friday, titled From the Periphery to the Centre, Mr. Moon outlined in great detail his interactions with the North Korean leader.
‘Needed guarantee’
“Kim said he would forsake nuclear weapons if there was a guarantee of regime survival,” Mr. Moon said in the book, adding that he felt the young North Korean leader was “very honest”.
According to Mr. Moon, Mr. Kim’s reasoning was: “I have a daughter and I do not wish her generation to live with nuclear weapons... Why would we continue to live in diculty, under sanctions, with nuclear weapons if our security can be guaranteed?”
But the North Korean leader was “well aware of mistrust from the international community and the (belief from the) U.S. that the North had been lying” about its commitments to denuclearisation, Mr. Moon said. Mr. Kim specically asked him how the North could manage to “make Washington believe in our sincerity” to disarm, Mr. Moon added.
In ve years since the Hanoi summit, Pyongyang has declared itself an “irreversible”
nuclear weapons power, accelerated weapons development, branded Seoul its “principal enemy” and threatened war over “even 0.001 mm” of territorial infringement.
It has also moved closer to Moscow, purportedly supplying it with arms in exchange for space technologies, something which would violate rafts of United Nations sanctions on both countries.
Despite how things have played out, Mr. Moon said in his memoir that he still believed Mr. Kim was sincere in his plans to denuclearise, but that it was strongly contingent on “corresponding measures” from the U.S.
Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump failed to strike a deal because Washington demanded complete denuclearisation before it would consider providing sanctions relief, Mr. Moon wrote.
Mr. Trump was both apologetic and regretful that the Hanoi summit ended without a deal, Mr. Moon wrote. Mr. Trump was “willing to accept (the North Koreans’ terms) but then-Security Advisor John Bolton fervently opposed it,” Mr. Moon wrote.
When Mr. Trump asked then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for a second opinion, he agreed with Bolton, leaving Trump no option but to walk away, Moon wrote.
It is impossible to take Mr. Kim’s words at face value now, Hong Min a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unication in Seoul, said.
What was clear “is that Kim tried to change the status quo by expressing his intention to denuclearise,” he said. The only way to know if Mr. Kim was serious, would have been to strike a deal in Hanoi and “gauge how far the North would go towards denuclearisation,” he added.