By John Burton
Will Moon Jae-in become the second Korean president to win a Nobel Peace Prize after Kim Dae-jung? If the summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un comes off successfully, he could well be an award recipient. It would also be an example of how "Korea passing" has suddenly become "Korea asserting."
Moon has done an extraordinary job of rescuing Seoul from being sidelined in the escalating tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, and assuming instead a central role in finding a way out of a looming conflict.
He displayed deftness in responding to Kim Jong-un's olive branch at the beginning of the year by inviting North Korea to participate in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. He has since undertaken the much more difficult task of keeping momentum toward a peaceful resolution of the nuclear crisis going once the Olympic Games ended.
Moon has not only promoted continued inter-Korean diplomacy, but has managed to bridge the divide between Washington and Pyongyang by serving as a mediator. Imagine Park Geun-hye trying to play that role if she was still in power.
He has achieved all this despite initial skepticism. His conservative critics attacked him for rolling out the red carpet for North Korea and by saying that the PyeongChang Olympics turned into the Pyongyang Olympics. Many analysts thought that the Olympics would represent only a temporary pause in escalating tensions.
By conducting shuttle diplomacy between Pyongyang and Washington, Moon's top aides laid the groundwork for the Trump-Kim summit. This effort has since been aided by secret contacts between the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, South Korea's National Intelligence Service and the former head of North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau, according to The New York Times.
The danger for Moon, however, is that playing an intermediary role leaves him vulnerable if things go wrong in the coming weeks. The knifes are already being sharpened in Washington in case he fails. Moon's U. S. critics suggest that he has misled Trump to agreeing to hold a summit with Kim, for which the U.S. president is unprepared, by suggesting that Pyongyang is ready to talk about denuclearization.
"It is in South Korea's interest to put the best spin on whatever happened in Pyongyang [when Moon's team met Kim], given Seoul's fears about the ongoing drumbeat from the White House about using military strikes against North Korea and President Moon Jae-in's desire to be in the driver's seat on Korean Peninsula affairs," said Jung H. Park, the new Korea chair at the Brookings Institute, who has emerged as one of Moon's biggest naysayers in Washington.
"It's possible that they took whatever nuggets they extracted from Kim, spit-shined and polished them, and presented Kim's offers on a velvet pillow ― along with a good dose of flattery ('Your maximum pressure campaign is working, Mr. Trump') ― to try to get the United States on the engagement track," she added.
This fits in with a broader narrative being promoted by the U.S. foreign policy establishment that Trump is being played for a fool by both Koreas, buttressed by the moralistic argument once expressed by former Vice President Dick Cheney that "We don't negotiate with evil, we defeat it." There is much talk that Trump is giving legitimacy and prestige to Kim by sitting down and talking to him without getting anything in return.
A greater threat to the summit that is not much discussed in Washington is that Kim may not have expected Trump to accept his invitation. This has put the North Korean leader on the back foot and has left him as ill-prepared as Trump. This may explain why Pyongyang has yet to publicly comment on the possible meeting.
The herd mentality of the U.S. media and pundits in focusing on what could go wrong at a Trump-Kim summit is overshadowing the Moon-Kim summit that is planned to occur in the next few weeks. The inattention being paid to that meeting is a reminder that it is still "Korea passing" when it comes to the conversation in Washington.
The Moon-Kim summit is likely to be crucial in resolving some of the issues surrounding the Trump-Kim summit. Information that Moon gleams from that meeting could provide useful advice to Trump as he prepares for his summit.
Moon should take advantage of the fact Trump, having accepted the Kim summit in a blaze of publicity, will not want to be seen losing face if the talks collapse. Seoul should be ready to suggest its own ideas on making the Trump-Kim summit a success as its pushes back against the Washington hardliners on North Korea.
If he succeeds, no one can keep accusing Moon of peddling "Moonshine" when it comes to his North Korea policy.
John Burton (johnburtonft@yahoo.com), a former Korea correspondent for The Financial Times, is now a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and consultant.
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Moon has done an extraordinary job of rescuing Seoul from being sidelined in the escalating tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, and assuming instead a central role in finding a way out of a looming conflict.
He displayed deftness in responding to Kim Jong-un's olive branch at the beginning of the year by inviting North Korea to participate in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. He has since undertaken the much more difficult task of keeping momentum toward a peaceful resolution of the nuclear crisis going once the Olympic Games ended.
Moon has not only promoted continued inter-Korean diplomacy, but has managed to bridge the divide between Washington and Pyongyang by serving as a mediator. Imagine Park Geun-hye trying to play that role if she was still in power.
He has achieved all this despite initial skepticism. His conservative critics attacked him for rolling out the red carpet for North Korea and by saying that the PyeongChang Olympics turned into the Pyongyang Olympics. Many analysts thought that the Olympics would represent only a temporary pause in escalating tensions.
By conducting shuttle diplomacy between Pyongyang and Washington, Moon's top aides laid the groundwork for the Trump-Kim summit. This effort has since been aided by secret contacts between the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, South Korea's National Intelligence Service and the former head of North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau, according to The New York Times.
The danger for Moon, however, is that playing an intermediary role leaves him vulnerable if things go wrong in the coming weeks. The knifes are already being sharpened in Washington in case he fails. Moon's U. S. critics suggest that he has misled Trump to agreeing to hold a summit with Kim, for which the U.S. president is unprepared, by suggesting that Pyongyang is ready to talk about denuclearization.
"It is in South Korea's interest to put the best spin on whatever happened in Pyongyang [when Moon's team met Kim], given Seoul's fears about the ongoing drumbeat from the White House about using military strikes against North Korea and President Moon Jae-in's desire to be in the driver's seat on Korean Peninsula affairs," said Jung H. Park, the new Korea chair at the Brookings Institute, who has emerged as one of Moon's biggest naysayers in Washington.
"It's possible that they took whatever nuggets they extracted from Kim, spit-shined and polished them, and presented Kim's offers on a velvet pillow ― along with a good dose of flattery ('Your maximum pressure campaign is working, Mr. Trump') ― to try to get the United States on the engagement track," she added.
This fits in with a broader narrative being promoted by the U.S. foreign policy establishment that Trump is being played for a fool by both Koreas, buttressed by the moralistic argument once expressed by former Vice President Dick Cheney that "We don't negotiate with evil, we defeat it." There is much talk that Trump is giving legitimacy and prestige to Kim by sitting down and talking to him without getting anything in return.
A greater threat to the summit that is not much discussed in Washington is that Kim may not have expected Trump to accept his invitation. This has put the North Korean leader on the back foot and has left him as ill-prepared as Trump. This may explain why Pyongyang has yet to publicly comment on the possible meeting.
The herd mentality of the U.S. media and pundits in focusing on what could go wrong at a Trump-Kim summit is overshadowing the Moon-Kim summit that is planned to occur in the next few weeks. The inattention being paid to that meeting is a reminder that it is still "Korea passing" when it comes to the conversation in Washington.
The Moon-Kim summit is likely to be crucial in resolving some of the issues surrounding the Trump-Kim summit. Information that Moon gleams from that meeting could provide useful advice to Trump as he prepares for his summit.
Moon should take advantage of the fact Trump, having accepted the Kim summit in a blaze of publicity, will not want to be seen losing face if the talks collapse. Seoul should be ready to suggest its own ideas on making the Trump-Kim summit a success as its pushes back against the Washington hardliners on North Korea.
If he succeeds, no one can keep accusing Moon of peddling "Moonshine" when it comes to his North Korea policy.
John Burton (johnburtonft@yahoo.com), a former Korea correspondent for The Financial Times, is now a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and consultant.
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