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An article for the Atlantic written by Robert Carlin and Joel Wit makes the case for the Trump administration using the Pyeongchang Olympics as an opportunity for improving US-NK relations. (taken from the Atlantic website)

US experts suggested that the Donald Trump administration should emulate the Ronald Reagan administration’s actions during the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics and use the upcoming Pyeongchang Winter Olympics as an opportunity to improve relations with North Korea.

Stanford University Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) visiting fellow Robert Carlin and Johns Hopkins U.S.-Korea Institute senior fellow Joel Wit published a Jan. 9 piece in The Atlantic titled “How the Olympics Could Help Defuse the North Korea Crisis.” In the piece, the two experts call on the Trump administration to benchmark the Reagan administration, noting that despite the 30-year difference between the 1988 and 2018 Olympics, they both present “an opportunity for Washington and Seoul to coordinate their strategy and move from confrontation to dialogue.”

The authors noted the example of then-South Korean President Roh Tae-woo, who “began considering a new approach: dialogue with North Korea if the [1988 Seoul] Olympics went off without a hitch.” The policy shift came at a time of heightened concerns that North Korea might disrupt the Olympics following the Nov. 1987 bombing of Korean Air Flight 858.

Normally hawkish on North Korea issues, the Reagan administration adopted the mindset that peace on the Korean Peninsula could only be guaranteed by approaching Pyongyang, and began discussions with Seoul on a policy shift toward “engagement” to reduce North Korea’s isolation.

Carlin and Wit wrote that Reagan’s greater openness in North Korea policy laid the groundwork for 1992 talks between US undersecretary of state Arnold Kanter and North Korean Workers’ Party secretary Kim Yong-sun, and eventually for the US-NK Agreed Framework in Geneva.

“With this year’s Olympics, history has offered us a chance to try again. If the United States and South Korea ignore the lesson of 1988, the window will close,” they warned.

The US State Department released an official statement the same day expressing its “welcome” of inter-Korean talks. But in a telephone interview with Voice of America, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs spokesperson Katina Adams said, “Time will tell if this is a genuine gesture [from North Korea].”

Adams also echoed President Moon Jae-in’s message that no progress could be realized in inter-Korean relations without a solution to the North Korean nuclear program. In a briefing, White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the “next steps would be denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” which she called the US’s “number one priority.”

By Jeon Jeong-yoon, staff reporter

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