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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un returns to Pyongyang from his Vietnam trip on Mar. 5. (Yonhap News)

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un arrived in Pyongyang early in the morning of Mar. 5 after a train journey of 11 days. The disappointment over the failure to reach an agreement with the US in the Hanoi summit was evident in the terse description given by the Rodong Sinmun newspaper in its report on Kim’s return, which described the summit as “productive.” It reads as evidence of just how high the North’s hopes for this summit were.

But despite the lack of an agreement, the window of opportunity is still open, and it’s too early to despair. On Mar. 4, US Secretary of State reaffirmed his willingness to resume talks, announcing that he wanted to send a negotiating team to Pyongyang “in the next couple weeks.” We look forward to both sides getting back to negotiating after taking some time to deal with the aftereffects from the talks’ collapse.

It’s time now for the South Korean government to take proactive steps as a mediator in the North Korea-US negotiations. That was most likely the message President Moon Jae-in wanted to send when he declared South Korea’s role to have “become crucial once again” and instructed the relevant ministries to “accurately assess the differences in position between North Korea and the US and come up with ideas for bridging the gap” during a National Security Council (NSC) meeting on Mar. 4. After stressing that the immediate order of business was to “prevent North Korea-US dialogue from derailing,” he went on to emphasize Seoul’s catalyzing role, calling for efforts to allow “the swift resumption of North Korea-US working-level dialogue so that the deadlock does not go on too long.”

The situation is not great. The outcome of the Hanoi summit shows clearly just how big the divide is between Pyongyang and Washington. North Korea wanted UN sanctions on livelihood-related areas lifted in exchange for permanently dismantling its nuclear facilities at Yongbyon; while the US reportedly demanded the dismantlement of the North’s ballistic missiles and biological and chemical weapons in addition to Yongbyon and all other nuclear facilities and weapons. The gap appears too large to permit an easy compromise.

But for a Korean Peninsula that has already experienced all the horrors of war, there is no other way out besides resolving issues through dialogue and negotiation. The South Korean government needs to reflect accurately on the full situation with the North Korea-US talks, drawing upon all its channels with both sides to figure out what the problem is and what each side really wants in order to produce a mediation plan that can satisfy both. Pyongyang and Washington, for their part, each need to give more serious consideration to their counterpart’s demands and concerns. North Korea should listen to the US when it says it wants something more than the dismantlement of Yongbyon. And if the US is demanding “complete denuclearization,” it needs to consider realistic ways of allaying Pyongyang’s concerns about subsequent security guarantees.

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]