[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 nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.”]
By Michelle Ye Hee Lee
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North
Korean leader Kim Jong Un, left, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in
emerge
from their meeting at the northern side of Panmunjom in North Korea
on
Saturday. (South Korea Presidential Blue House/AP
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SEOUL
— 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 came into sharp
focus in the past week, after President Trump canceled 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 demilitarized zone for a meeting.
Then, on Sunday, U.S. 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 denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
His conservative critics, however, say Moon
should be reinforcing the U.S.-South Korea alliance rather than acting as a
neutral facilitator between North Korea and the United States. They also say
Moon is setting unrealistic expectations and masking fundamental gaps between
the two sides on the definition of denuclearization.
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 nuclear-free 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 three-page agreement, which they note is short on
details, for political gain ahead of local elections in June.
In a briefing Sunday, Moon said he hopes for
an eventual trilateral summit. He described the U.S.-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-U.S. summit, which is essential to improving inter-Korean
relations,” Moon said. “I hope that if the North Korea-U.S. 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, recognizing that both
Trump and Kim need to walk away with a win.
Moon’s spokesman declined to comment on the
president’s diplomatic efforts.
“Leading up to the summit, I anticipate his
role will be an extension of the work he is doing now,” said Wi Sung-lac, South
Korea’s former nuclear negotiator with the North, “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.”
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 recognizing the U.S. president holds the key to
resuming negotiations, Moon remained committed to salvaging the summit, they
said.
After Saturday’s inter-Korean summit, Moon
appeared poised again to serve as mediator.
Moon announced that the North Korean leader
was still committed to “complete denuclearization” but declined to define what
Kim meant, suggesting fundamental differences remain between North Korea and
the United States.
Washington wants North Korea to get rid of
its nuclear weapons program 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 program. Its demands could include a reduced
U.S. 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 U.S.-North Korea meeting succeeds and whether Moon is an effective
facilitator, said Chun Yung-woo, a former South Korea national security adviser
and nuclear negotiator with the North.
“The inter-Korean summit was important to
give political momentum in convening the Trump-Kim summit and energizing
U.S.-North Korea expert-level meetings,” Chun said. “That [summit] will help,
but I don’t think that President Moon and Kim Jong Un can talk about the
detailed technical issues that are vital.”
The U.S. and North Korean governments will
need to negotiate the terms and conditions of denuclearization and the scope of
verification of the program’s destruction, 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
denuclearization, 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-U.S. alliance to meet North Korea’s expectations of regime security, and
these issues should be discussed ahead of the summit, he said.
“You have to talk about U.S. military
presence [in South Korea],” he said. “You have to talk about Republic of
Korea-U.S. alliance, the nuclear umbrella provided for South Korea.”
Yoon Young-kwan, 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.
“The Korean government standing in the middle
is not going to close the gap directly” between North Korea and the U.S.
government, Yoon said. South Korea’s role “is to more aggressively push both
sides to talk to each other.”
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 U.S.-South Korea
alliance.
“I believe the South Korean president must
stand alongside President Trump to take the lead in denuclearization,” said
Hong Joon-pyo, chairman of the Liberty Korea Party, the main conservative
opposition.
Moon “does not seem to be focused on
denuclearization but on being an advocate of the North,” Hong said. “That is
our party’s view, and we believe it is extremely dangerous.”
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