Moon seeks to break nuclear deadlock
SEOUL: South Korean President Moon Jae-in travels to Pyongyang this week for his third summit with Kim Jong Un, looking to break the deadlock in nuclear talks between North Korea and the United States.
Moon—whose own parents fled the North during the 1950-53 Korean War—flies north on Tuesday for a three-day trip, following in the footsteps of his predecessors Kim Dae-jung in 2000 and mentor Roh Moo-hyun in 2007.
The visit comes after the North staged its “Mass Games” propaganda display for the first time in five years.
The new show featured imagery of Kim and Moon at their first summit in April in the Demilitarized Zone that divides the peninsula—prompting the unusual sight of tens of thousands of North Koreans in the May Day Stadium applauding pictures of Seoul’s leader.
But while the summit at the Panmunjom border truce village was high on headline-grabbing symbolism, with Moon stepping briefly into the North and the two sharing an extended one-to-one woodland chat, pressure is mounting for substantive progress.
Moon, who met Kim again in May, was instrumental in brokering the historic summit the following month between US President Donald Trump and Kim in Singapore, when Kim backed denuclearization of the “Korean peninsula.”
But no details were agreed and Washington and Pyongyang have sparred since over what that means and how it will be achieved.
At the same time the US and South Korea have sometimes moved at radically different speeds in their approach to the North.
Moon will try again to “play the role of facilitator or mediator”, said his special adviser on foreign affairs Moon Chung-in.
“He believes that improved inter-Korean relations have some role in facilitating US-DPRK talks as well as solving the North Korean nuclear problem,” he told reporters, using the North’s official acronym.
Washington has been adamant that the North carry out a “final, fully verified denuclearization” first, while Pyongyang is demanding a formal declaration from the US that the Korean War is over.
Moon may try to convince the North Korean leader to verbally commit to providing a list of the country’s existing nuclear program, said Shin Beom-cheol, another analyst at the Asian Institute.
Despite the deadlock in denuclearization talks, since the Panmunjom summit the two Koreas have sought to pursue joint projects in multiple fields.
But North Korea is under several different sets of sanctions for its nuclear and missile programs, complicating Moon’s desire to promote cross-border economic schemes.
The dovish South Korean president is taking several South Korean business tycoons with him to the North, including Samsung heir Lee Jae-yong and the vice chairman of the Hyundai Motor Group, whose founder was a wartime refugee from the North.
“He is sending a message to the North to speedily complete denuclearization, conclude talks with the US so that South Korea can begin full-fledged economic cooperation,” said analyst Go.
And special advisor Moon Chung-in added that the South Korean president could look to persuade Kim to come up with a “somewhat radical and bold initiative”, such as dismantling some nuclear bombs, and press the US for reciprocal measures.
AFP
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