Korean diplomacy heats up
North official believed to be making historic trip to US to plan for summit
Diplomacy has accelerated ahead of a potential summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Senior North Korean official Kim Yong Chol was believed to be heading to the United States, potentially for more talks to set up the summit, while a team of American diplomats left a hotel in South Korea and were thought to be having discussions with their North Korean counterparts. Kim Yong Chol would be the most senior North Korean official to visit the US in 18 years.
South Korean news agency Yonhap said Kim Yong Chol’s name was on the passenger list for a flight today from Beijing to New York. It earlier reported that he was heading straight to Washington, but later said he changed his flight to New York.
Kim is a former military intelligence chief and now a vice-chairman of the North Korean ruling party’s central committee tasked with interKorean relations.
A visit to the US would mark the highest-level North Korean official visit since National Defence Commission First Vice-Chairman Jo Myong Rok visited Washington in 2000, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said.
In South Korea, it wasn’t immediately clear whether the American officials, including Sung Kim, the US ambassador to Manila, were heading to the Korean village of Panmunjom, which straddles the border inside the Demilitarised Zone, where they met with North Korean officials on Monday. Sung Kim is a former US ambassador to South Korea and was a top negotiator with North Korea in past nuclear talks.
Trump withdrew from the planned June 12 summit with Kim Jong Un on Friday, citing hostile North Korean comments, but has since said the meeting in Singapore could still happen.
South Korean President Moon Jae In, who has lobbied hard for nuclear negotiations between Trump and Kim, met with the North Korean leader in a surprise meeting on Sunday in an effort to keep the summit alive.
In their second meeting in a month, Moon said Kim expressed willingness to co-operate to end confrontation and work toward peace for the sake of a successful summit with Trump.
In the tug-of-war between the United States and North Korea over the tentative summit in Singapore, South Korean President Moon Jae In is the man in the precarious middle, trying to broker a high-stakes meeting between two unconventional leaders.
Moon’s role as a mediator has come into sharp focus in the past week, after US President Donald Trump cancelled the summit in a letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
As Kim sought to reopen talks, he turned to Moon. In less than 24 hours, Moon’s motorcade snaked through traffic to cross the demilitarised zone for a meeting.
Then, on Monday, US officials crossed the DMZ into North Korea for talks to prepare for the potential June 12 summit, even as its fate remained uncertain.
The fact that talks resumed a day after the surprise inter-Korean meeting was viewed by Moon’s supporters as a sign of his increasingly effective role. Moon had pledged during his 2017 campaign to take the “driver’s seat” to achieve denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
His conservative critics, however, say Moon should be reinforcing the US-South Korea alliance rather than acting as a neutral facilitator between North Korea and the US. They also say Moon is setting unrealistic expectations and masking fundamental gaps between the two sides on the definition of denuclearisation.
Moon’s rapprochement with the North has divided the South Korean Government. On Monday, the legislature failed to ratify the “Panmunjom Declaration”, an agreement Kim and Moon signed at a summit in April to seek “a nuclearfree Korean peninsula”. Moon and the governing Democratic Party have sought to guarantee that the agreement becomes law and can be enforced regardless of a change in government.
But conservative lawmakers accuse the governing party of using the threepage agreement for political gain ahead of local elections in
June.
In a briefing on Sunday, Moon said he hopes for an eventual trilateral summit. He described the US-North Korea summit as a key first step in achieving his goal of a formal declaration ending the Korean War.
“Every effort I am making now is on one hand to improve inter-Korean relations, and on the other hand, to ensure the success of the North Korea-US summit, which is essential to improving inter-Korean relations,” Moon said. “I hope that if the North Korea-US summit is successful, the declaration of the Korean War will be pursued through the trilateral summit.”
The son of North Korean refugees who fled to the South during the war, Moon forged his political career under progressive President Roh Moo Hyun, who led the country from 2003 to 2008. Roh and his predecessor, Kim Dae Jung, advocated the “Sunshine Policy” of engaging with North Korea.
Moon, the first progressive President to take office since Roh, has vowed to continue those leaders’ efforts to pursue peace on the Korean peninsula. Allies say the mild-mannered, soft-spoken Moon is willing to play the long game without taking credit, recognising that both Trump and Kim need to walk away with a win.
“Leading up to the summit, I anticipate his role will be an extension of the work he is doing now, persuading both sides to remain at the table as they negotiate in advance of the summit, and helping them see points they can agree on,” said Wi Sung Lac, former South Korean nuclear negotiator with the North.
Last week, however, Moon faced a setback. He was blindsided by Trump’s decision to cancel the summit, less than a day after the South Korean leader returned from a meeting in the Oval Office. Trump’s action was discouraging and hurtful, Moon’s advisers said. But recognising the US President holds the key to resuming negotiations, Moon remained committed to salvaging the summit, they said. After Sunday’s interKorean summit, Moon appeared poised once again to serve as mediator. He announced that Kim was still committed to “complete denuclearisation” but declined to define what Kim meant, suggesting fundamental differences remain between North Korea and the US. Washington wants North Korea to get rid of its nuclear weapons programme and allow outside experts to verify it has been abolished. North Korea insists on guarantees that Kim’s regime would remain in power if it abandoned its nuclear programme.
Its demands could also include a reduced US military role in South Korea or an end to the American nuclear “umbrella” over South Korea and Japan. It is unclear to what degree the two sides are willing to compromise.
The issue is central in determining whether the US-North Korea meeting succeeds, and whether Moon is an effective facilitator, said Chun Yung Woo, a former South Korean national security adviser and nuclear negotiator with the North.
“The inter-Korean summit was important to give political momentum in convening the TrumpKim summit, and energising US-North Korea expert-level meetings,” Chun said.
“President Moon wants the two leaders together in Singapore. He wants to ensure the success of the summit,” Chun said. “But success depends on how far North Korea is willing to go in denuclearisation, what kind of terms and conditions North Korea will demand, and to what extent Trump is going to accommodate North Korean demands.”
Kim Sung Han, dean of Korea University’s Graduate School of International Studies and a former Vice-Foreign Minister under conservative President Lee Myung Bak, added that Moon should also be zeroing in on implications for South Korea.
A deal could involve a change in the South Korea-US alliance to meet North Korea’s expectations of regime security, and these issues should be discussed ahead of the summit, he said.
Yoon Young Kwan, former Foreign Minister under Roh, said Moon’s role is not to get in the weeds on technical details but to create an environment that would lead to a summit. Moon has played a critical role in delivering the positions of each side to the other while encouraging them to speak to each other, Yoon said.
To conservative critics, however, Moon’s desire to facilitate rather than advocate for one side is a sign that he is siding with North Korea. They say he is neglecting the US-South Korea alliance.
“I believe the South Korean President must stand alongside President Trump to take the lead in denuclearisation,” said Hong Joon Pyo, chairman of the main conservative opposition Liberty Korea Party.
Moon “does not seem to be focused on denuclearisation, but on being an advocate of the North,” Hong said. “That is our party’s view, and we believe it is extremely dangerous.”