Tensions grew through 2017 as North Korea upped its nuclear and long-range missile testing and Trump’s war of words with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un degenerated into name-calling — Trump the ‘dotard’ versus ‘short and fat’ ‘rocket man’ Kim. In August 2017, Trump threatened North Korea with ‘fire and fury … the likes of which this world has never seen before’ raising anxieties that he might push the doomsday clock to midnight. The Trump administration pressed close to the edge as it contemplated a so-called ‘bloody nose’ strike.
In February 2018, the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics saw a remarkable diplomatic turnaround. South Korean President Moon Jae-in seized the initiative, met with Kim Jong-un’s sister Kim Yo-jong on the sidelines of the Games, and sent his security and intelligence chiefs, Chung Eui-yong and Suh Hoon, to meet with Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang. When Chung and Suh went to Washington to debrief Trump in March 2018, Trump shocked the world by agreeing to become the first sitting US President to meet a North Korean leader. Trump’s impulsiveness calmed the fires he had fuelled the year before.
The doors opened on a flurry of summit diplomacy. Since March 2018, Kim Jong-un, who had until then never met a foreign leader before, has now met with Chinese President Xi Jinping five times, South Korean President Moon Jae-in four times, US President Donald Trump three times, and Russian President Vladimir Putin once. In June 2018, at the Singapore Summit, there was a positive first step on the long journey toward denuclearisation and peace, with trust-building its necessary prerequisite.
Things began to unravel in 2019. The Hanoi Summit in February ended a half-day early as Trump and Kim failed to make progress. Kim wanted quick sanctions relief, an imperative given urgency after he announced that North Korea’s nuclear weapons development was complete and ordered the devotion of all resources to the economy in April 2018. He offered as a first step to dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear complex in exchange for the lifting of the 2016 and 2017 UN Security Council resolutions which ‘hamper the civilian economy’. Trump, keen on a quick foreign policy victory to distract from his Mueller investigation woes, insisted on one-shot denuclearisation.
The situation has since remained at an impasse. North Korea fears denuclearisation today and regime change tomorrow, as happened to Libya. The United States is hesitant to give up sanctions leverage too early for fear of being left to buy the horse again. This trust deficit continues to hinder efforts to negotiate step-for-step denuclearisation and a peace treaty to replace the Korean War Armistice Agreement.
In April 2019, Kim called on the United States to make a ‘courageous decision’ to end its ‘hostile policy’ against North Korea by the end of the year. As the deadline approached, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Ri Thae Song issued a cryptic message saying that it was up to the United States to select what Christmas gift it wanted. However the deadline passed without any change in US posture and without any nuclear or long-range missile test, which would have closed the doors on negotiations.
As Evans Revere explains in one of three Korea feature pieces this week, the mood in Pyongyang may have shifted in favour of the hawks. ‘In a speech to his ruling Workers’ Party delivered on 31 December 2019, Kim announced a “new path” that promises more advanced “strategic weapons”, nuclear and long-range missile tests, the end of denuclearisation and a “long confrontation” with the United States’. As Charles Armstrong observes in another feature on the Korean Peninsula problem, North Korea’s ‘new path’ offers ‘little hope for improved US–North Korea relations in the near term’.
This circumstance leaves the Trump administration with policy options that ‘range from horrible to hard’, says Revere. ‘Reverting to the “fire and fury” of 2017 risks a horrific war resulting in massive casualties, the destruction of the Peninsula and North Korean attacks on Japan and even the United States’. Conversely, ‘accepting a nuclear North Korea and relying on containment and deterrence to “manage” the threat leaves in place a permanent threat to the United States and its allies’.
Increasing sanctions and pressure ‘could threaten the one thing North Korea treasures more than its nuclear weapons — the survival of its regime’, Revere says — and help establish a more credible basis for negotiations. However, ‘the Trump administration’s aversion to traditional leadership, multilateralism and coalition building, its alienation of China, the erosion of US alliances, Washington’s loss of moral authority … suggest that it may not have the capacity to pursue such a course’. Trump will be ‘focused on his re-election campaign until November, and … his impeachment trial’ and ‘reaching out again to North Korea may not help his re-election prospects’, Armstrong adds. ‘Despite President Moon’s optimism vis-à-vis the North, he will need to focus attention on the shaky South Korean economy and elections for the National Assembly in April’.
Renewed US–Japan–South Korea trilateral cooperation is needed to deter North Korean military provocation, hinted at as Kim’s ‘new path’. Naoko Aoki argues in another feature this week that relations between these countries face a number of strains. Japan and South Korea ‘have yet to find a way to manage their bitter economic and historical disputes’. Meanwhile, Trump risks undermining the US–South Korea and the US–Japan alliances over basing costs. ‘South Korea and the United States are struggling to agree on how much South Korea should pay for US troops stationed in the country, after the United States asked for a significant increase in funds’, says Aoki. The US–South Korea discussions will directly affect negotiations over ‘host nation support for US troops stationed in Japan, ahead of the expiration of the Special Measures Agreement in March 2021’.
As with the 1994 Agreed Framework, the Korean Peninsula Development Organization (1995–2006) and the Six-Party Talks (2003–2009), the breakdown of the current process risks becoming another case of an opportunity for peace squandered. Current developments risk continued entrenchment of never-ending Cold War on the Korean Peninsula.
The door to negotiations is ajar but bold action will be needed to reclaim initiative. This would have to include coordinating cooperation among the Six-Party Talks countries to show Pyongyang that the international community will not accept its nuclear weapons, energising US–North Korea trust building, and hammering out a roadmap for simultaneous and linked step-by-step denuclearisation and peace treaty negotiations. Despite the naysayers in Washington, South Korea’s continued engagement with North Korea will be essential to progress on all three fronts.
The EAF Editorial Board is located in the Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University.