SEOUL – President Moon Jae-in of South Korea has a message for the United States: President Biden must now commit to North Korea.
In an interview with The New York Times, Moon pushed the American leader to start negotiations with the government of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un after two years of diplomatic progress that has stalled and even stopped. inverted. Denuclearization, the South Korean president said, was a “survival issue” for his country.
He also called on the United States to cooperate with China on North Korea and other issues of global concern, including climate change. Deteriorated relations between superpowers, he said, could undermine any negotiation on denuclearization.
“If tensions between the United States and China intensify, North Korea can take advantage of it and capitalize on it,” Moon said.
It was partly a plea, part of Mr. Moon’s sales argument, which sat down with The Times as the United States tries to rebuild its relations in the region with one eye to counter China’s influence, and North Korea builds. nuclear arsenal. Moon, who is due to meet with Mr Biden next month in Washington, has appeared ready to take on the role of mediator between the two sides again.
In the interview, Mr. Moon was proud of his skillful diplomatic maneuvers in 2018, when he led the two unpredictable leaders from North Korea and the United States to meet in person. He was also pragmatic, tacitly acknowledging that his work to achieve denuclearization and peace in the Korean Peninsula has been ongoing ever since.
President Donald J. Trump has left office without removing any nuclear warheads from North Korea. Mr. Kim resumed gun testing. (…)
“He knocked around the bush and failed to get through it,” Moon said of Mr. Trump’s efforts on North Korea. “The most important starting point for both governments is to have the will to dialogue and to sit face to face at an early date.”
Now in his last year in office, Mr. Moon is determined to start over – and he knows he is facing a very different leader in Mr Biden.
Moon bet on Trump’s style, emphasizing “top-down diplomacy” based on personality, through individual meetings with Mr. Kim. Mr Biden, he said, was returning to the traditional “bottom-up” approach in which negotiators negotiate details before seeking the approval of their bosses.
“I hope that Biden will fall as the historic president who has made substantial and irreversible progress in the complete denuclearization and settlement of peace in the Korean Peninsula,” Moon said in an interview with Sangchunjae, a traditional Hanok executive residence Blue House.
Mr. Moon’s visit to Washington comes at a crucial time. The Biden administration is concluding its one-month political review of North Korea, one of the most pressing geopolitical issues for the United States.
Mister. Biden began to reverse many of his predecessor’s foreign policy decisions. But Mr Moon warned that it would be a mistake to kill the 2018 Singapore deal between Mr Trump and Mr Kim that set broad targets for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. (…)
“I think if we rely on what President Trump has left, we will see that this effort will materialize under Biden’s leadership,” he said.
Mr Moon called on the US and North Korea to move “gradually and gradually” towards denuclearization, exchanging concessions and incentives “simultaneously” along the way. It was a well-worn script for Mr. Moon, who occasionally paused during the interview to refer to his notes and punctuate his speech with small but determined hand gestures.
Some past American negotiators and conservative critics of Mr. Moon reject such a strategy, saying North Korea will block and undermine international sanctions, Washington’s best lever against the impoverished country. In the annual threat assessment launched last week, the US director of national intelligence said Mr Kim “believes that over time he will gain international acceptance and respect as a nuclear power”.
But Mr Moon’s team says the staged approach is the most realistic, even if it is imperfect. As his administration sees it, North Korea would never give up its arsenal in a single quick deal, so that the regime does not lose its only bargaining chip with Washington.
The key, Mr Moon said, is for the United States and North Korea to develop a “roadmap for mutual trust”.
American negotiators under Mr. Trump have never reached this point. Both sides could not even agree on a first step for the North and what reward Washington would offer in return.
Mr. Moon is not only struggling to save his “Korean Peninsula Peace Process,” but also his greatest diplomatic legacy.
As his policy in North Korea faltered, critics called him a naive pacifist who bet too much on Mr. Kim’s unproven commitment to denuclearization.
“His good intentions have had bad consequences,” said Kim Sung-han, a professor at Korea University. “His mediation did not work and we have no progress in denuclearization. His time is up. ”
Ever since the negotiations stalled, Mr. Moon’s troubles have risen at home. Its approval ratings have dropped to minimal levels amid real estate scandals and more. This month, angry voters overwhelmingly defeated his Democratic Party in the mayoral elections in South Korea’s two largest cities.
This is a sudden turn of fortunes since the beginning of his administration, when Mr Moon turned a geopolitical hair crisis into a signature policy initiative.
“When we took office in 2017, we were really worried about the possibility of another war in the Korean Peninsula,” he said.
Four days after his tenure, North Korea launched its Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile, which he said could target Hawaii and Alaska. The north then tested a hydrogen bomb and three intercontinental ballistic missiles. In response, Mr. Trump threatened “fire and anger” as groups of U.S. Navy carriers steamed toward the peninsula.
Mr Moon’s first diplomatic victory came when Mr Kim accepted his invitation to send a delegation to the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Shortly afterwards, Mr. Moon met with Mr. Kim at the heavily armed inter-Korean border.
During that meeting, Moon said that the North Korean dictator suggested that disarmament is a real possibility. “If safety can be guaranteed without nuclear weapons, why would I fight to maintain them even at the cost of sanctions?” Mr. Moon remembered saying Mr. Kim.
He said he passed that deal on to Trump, begging him to meet with Mr. Kim. At the Singapore television summit, Mr Trump promised “security guarantees” for North Korea, while Mr Kim pledged to “work for the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula”.
“It is clear to President Trump that he organized the first high-level meeting between North Korea and the United States,” he said.
But Mr Moon also complained that Mr Trump never followed suit, saying “there is no longer a nuclear threat in North Korea”. When Mr Kim and Mr Trump met again in 2019 in Hanoi, Vietnam, negotiations went nowhere, and the men left without an agreement on how to proceed with the Singapore agreement.
While Mr. Moon made sure to pay tribute to Mr. Trump, he also seemed frustrated by the former president’s erratic behavior and diplomacy on Twitter. Mr. Trump canceled or downplayed the United States’ annual joint military exercises with the South and called for what Mr. Moon called “an excessive amount” to keep 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea.
Moon said he had decided to suspend negotiations on a so-called defense cost-sharing agreement in the final months of Trump’s term. South Korea was willing to pay more, given its growing economic size, but Mr Trump’s demands violated the foundation of the two countries’ relationship.
“His request was not reasonable and rational,” Moon said.
The fact that Washington and Seoul could reach an agreement within 46 days of Mr Biden’s inauguration was a “clear testament to the importance President Biden attaches” to the alliance.
Mr. Moon is hopeful about the progress the new American leader can make in North Korea, although any significant discovery may be unrealistic, given the deep mistrust between Washington and Pyongyang.
Mr Biden said last month that he was “ready for some form of diplomacy” with North Korea, but that “it must be conditioned by the end result of denuclearization”.
North Korea has come up with ideas for a step-by-step approach to demolishing its only known nuclear test site, followed by the dismantling of a rocket engine test facility and the Yongbyon nuclear complex north of Pyongyang.
Moon said he believes such measures, if appropriate to US concessions, could lead to the removal of more popular assets in the North, such as ICBMs. In this scenario, he said, the move toward complete denuclearization becomes “irreversible.”
“This dialogue and diplomacy can lead to denuclearization,” he said. “If both sides learn from the failure in Hanoi and put their heads together for more realistic ideas, I am confident I can find a solution.”