DPRK-U.S. Summit Agreed and the Outlook on the Dismantlement of the Cold War Structure on the Korean Peninsula

No. 2018-16 (March 9, 2018)

Cheong Seong-Chang (Director, Unification Strategy Department)

softpower@sejong.org

In his visit to the U.S., national security advisor Chung Eui-yong delivered DPRK State Affairs Commission Chairperson Kim Jong-un’s message to President Trump, expressing his hopes to meet him in due course. President Trump positively replied that he will meet with Chairperson Kim by May to achieve perpetual denuclearization. Hence, the first-ever summit between North Korea and the U.S. is likely to be held in May.

             Several reasons were intertwined in agreeing to hold a bilateral summit between North Korea and the U.S., which have threatened each other with a ‘nuclear button’ until early this year: President Moon Jae-in’s active and continuous persuasion and efforts to mediate between North Korea and the U.S.; intensification of international isolation against North Korea due to the Trump administration’s ‘maximum pressure and engagement’; China’s active cooperation in sanctions against North Korea; and Kim Jong-un’s decision to avoid economic malaise caused by extremely-severe international sanctions regime against North Korea.

             When Kim Jong-un expressed the intention to participate in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics through his New Year’s address, North Korea only seemed interested in mending ties with the South while posing a hardline stance against the U.S., indicating that Kim Jong-un has a nuclear button on his desk. This Kim Jong-un suddenly offered President Trump to hold DPRK-U.S. summit. It seems that the political trust built between the two Koreas through the visit of Kim Yo-jong, Kim Jong-un’s sister, as a special envoy to South Korea and President Moon Jae-in’s assertive persuasion played a vital role in such dramatic shift.

             If President Moon propounded a summit with the U.S. to Chairperson Kim beyond a simple ‘exploratory dialogue’ and actively mediated the process, it would have been an offer difficult to decline. After the inter-Korean summit in June 2000, Kim Jong-il pursued to hold a summit with President Clinton backed by President Kim Dae-jung, but failed to do so after the Republican candidate George W. Bush was elected the president later that year. Therefore, if Kim Jong-un meets with President Trump with President Moon’s support, he will achieve a diplomatic feat that even his father could not reach.

             To discuss the practicalities of the DPRK-U.S. summit, North Korea could send a senior delegation headed by Ri Su-yong, vice-chairman for international affairs of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), or Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho and include Kim Yo-jong to the U.S., while the U.S. could send State Secretary Tillerson or National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster as a special envoy to North Korea. Regarding the venue of the summit, since North Korea will prefer Pyongyang and the U.S. will prefer Washington, the two sides are likely to decide the venue through discussions at the working level. Just as the two Koreas decided Panmunjom as the venue for the third inter-Korean summit in late April, the first DPRK-U.S. summit may be held again in Panmunjom in May.

             The North Korean nuclear and missile problem is a military issue as well as a highly-political issue. Therefore, as there are limitations in reaching a compromise among the six parties, I have continued to argue the necessity of summit talks between North Korea and other relevant states.

             At the DPRK-U.S. summit, Chairman Kim Jong-un may ask for the full removal of international sanctions on North Korea, normalization of DPRK-U.S. relations, and the suspension of ROK-U.S. joint military exercises in return for the abolishment of nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). Once President Trump takes this offer, this would mark a dramatic progress related to the North Korean nuclear and missile issue.

             The two leaders both have the incentive to pursue a ‘big deal’ – Kim Jong-un to avert an economic collapse and Trump to achieve the largest diplomatic outcome before the midterm elections this year. If the two countries agree on a compromise, North Korea will internally propagandize that the U.S. accepted to peacefully coexist with North Korea after the sixth nuclear test and three launches of ICBMs. On the other side, President Trump will announce that it has made North Korea renounce its nuclear program, a point that no administration reached before, through the ‘maximum pressure and engagement’ policy.

             If the inter-Korean summit is held in April and the DPRK-U.S. summit is held in May, North Korea may consecutively pursue summit talks with China, Russia, and Japan from June onwards. In 2000, after agreeing to hold the inter-Korean summit, Kim Jong-il met with the Chinese leader and after the inter-Korean summit, he met with the Russian leader. And in the same year, North Korea sought to hold a summit with the U.S., but failed and held a summit twice with Japan in 2002 and 2004 but failed to normalize bilateral ties.

             Once the DPRK-U.S. summit leads to the normalization of the two countries and the potential DPRK-Japan summit leads to the normalization of relations between North Korea and Japan as well, President Moon will achieve the initiative ‘to dismantle the Cold War structure on the Korean Peninsula,’ a dream forwarded by President Kim Dae-jung in the past, but failed to succeed. If North Korea normalizes relations with the U.S. and Japan with President Moon’s support, it could achieve rapid economic growth, being integrated in the international community and receiving compensation for the colonial rule from Japan.

             Obviously, even if North Korea and the U.S. agree on the abolition of nuclear weapons, the difficult task of verifying the abolition prevents an optimistic outlook on DPRK-U.S. relations to be fully seated. And with the rift of distrust between North Korean and the U.S. being so vast, the Moon administration should pour in continuous efforts to bridge the relations to advance the process of nuclear abolition. I give a hand of applause to the Moon Jae-in administration which brought about the agreement to hold DPRK-U.S. summit and hope the administration to play a more active role of ‘the driver’ to hold DPRK-Japan summit and to dismantle the Cold War structure on the Korean Peninsula.

※Translator’s note: This is an unofficial translation of the original paper which was written in Korean. All references should be made to the original paper.