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President Moon Jae-in shakes hands with Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong at the Blue House on Feb. 26. (Blue House Photo Pool)

Despite the calm winds of reconciliation blowing during the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, the Korean Peninsula remains unstable. If South Korea and the US resume the joint military exercises that were delayed during the Olympics and if North Korea and the US return to their confrontation, the peninsula could be haunted by the specter of war, just as it was last year. That’s why the South Korean government under President Moon Jae-in has accelerated its preparations for the post-Pyeongchang phase since the closing ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.

On the morning of Feb. 26, Moon met with Chinese Vice Premier Liu Yandong, who visited South Korea as a special envoy for Chinese President Xi Jinping, and asked China for its cooperation so that the mood for dialogue created during the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics can lead to North Korea-US dialogue. “Recently, North Korea has been showing an eagerness to talk with the US, while the US has been talking about the need for dialogue, too. The US needs to lower the threshold for dialogue, while North Korea needs to show a commitment to denuclearization. That’s why it’s important for the US and North Korea to sit down at the table together soon,” Moon said.

Liu expressed her enthusiastic support for these ideas: “China is happy to see the trend toward easing tensions on the Korean Peninsula that has taken shape this year. China and South Korea need to work together on persuading North Korea and the US to engage in dialogue.”

During his meeting with Kim Yong-chol, vice chairman of the Korean Workers' Party’s Central Committee and director of the United Front Department, along with the rest of North Korea’s high-ranking delegation on Feb. 25, Moon emphasized that “North Korea-US dialogue needs to be held quickly in order to improve inter-Korean relations and to achieve a fundamental resolution to the issue of the Korean Peninsula.” Moon not only stated the principle of denuclearization but also mentioned the specific approach needed to accomplish this, a Blue House official said. Moon urged North Korea to be more proactive about bringing stability to the Korean Peninsula.

The “fundamental resolution to the issue of the Korean Peninsula” that Moon emphasized means bringing an end to the Cold War regime on the Korean Peninsula through denuclearization, normalizing North Korea’s relations with the US and Japan, a peace treaty and a multilateral security regime in Northeast Asia. This reflects the view that the North Korean nuclear issue is a product of hostile relations between North Korea and the US. When South and North Korea joined the UN in the early 1990s, South Korea established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union (Russia) and with China, but North Korea was unable to normalize its relations with the US and Japan, which triggered the first North Korean nuclear crisis in 1993.

It is in this context that Blue House National Security Advisor Chung Eui-yong forcefully explained the efforts the Moon administration had made so far to set the mood for peace on the Korean Peninsula during a luncheon with Kim Yong-chol and the rest of the North Korean delegation. While emphasizing that South Korea had created the conditions for North Korea-US dialogue by repairing its relations with the major powers that influence Korean Peninsula affairs – namely, the US, China, Japan and Russia – Chung called on the North to take more concrete steps to enable dialogue with the US. Kim responded by praising the South Korean government’s efforts and by repeating his remark from the previous day that “the door is open to dialogue with the US.”

For now, the US seems content to observe North Korea’s actions. On Feb. 25, the White House responded to the North Korean delegation’s statement of its openness to dialogue by saying that it will be waiting to see if North Korea’s message leads to the first steps down the road toward denuclearization. “The maximum pressure campaign must continue until North Korea denuclearizes. As President Trump has said, there is a brighter path available for North Korea if it chooses denuclearization,” the White House said in a statement provided by House Spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders. This appears to mean that the US will decide on its next step after assessing the context of North Korea’s message and learning more about it. The US’s official position thus far has been that it is ready to hold talks if North Korea wants them.

If North Korea and the US linger before the door to dialogue for too long, the momentum created by the Pyeongchang Olympics could run out. That’s why the South Korean government must play an active role in quickly arranging North Korea-US dialogue. “For now, we need to continue staggered trilateral dialogue between South and North Korea and between North Korea and the US,” argued Kim Yeon-cheol, a professor at Inje University.

Among the three bilateral relationships (inter-Korean, South Korea-US and North Korea-US) that constitute this trilateral system, the South Korean government can move things along in its relationships with North Korea and the US, and it must use these relationships to push forward North Korea-US dialogue, Kim said.