hankyoreh

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un hold up their hands after signing the Panmunjeom Declaration for Peace

During a meeting with Blue House senior secretaries and aides on Apr. 30, the first such meeting held since the inter-Korean summit on Apr. 27, President Moon Jae-in repeatedly emphasized “swift follow-up measures across the government.” Moon’s remarks appear to be aimed at ensuring that the Panmunjeom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification of the Korean Peninsula is actually put into practice, unlike past statements. His goal is to give the agreements reached during the summit too much momentum to be reversed even if a different party gains power.

To begin with, Moon gave orders for the inter-Korean summit preparatory committee, which is chaired by Moon’s chief of staff Im Jong-seok, to be reorganized as the “inter-Korean summit implementation committee.” Given the vast scope of Moon’s agreement with Kim – which covers the sustainable development of inter-Korean relations, institutions for establishing peace and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula – Moon believes that there need to be follow-up measures across the government.

Moon harbors bitter memories about a previous declaration. When former president Roh Moo-hyun met with Kim Jong-il in 2007, Moon was chair of the summit preparatory committee. While the inter-Korean agreement expressed in the resulting Oct. 4 Declaration was more specific than the June 15 Joint Statement reached at a previous summit in 2000, this agreement was never implemented since Roh was near the end of his presidency.

Moon’s pledge during the presidential election last year to hold an inter-Korean summit within one year was grounded in this experience. The implementation committee that will lead the pan-government response is likely to be led by Prime Minister Lee Nak-yeon.

It is also notable that Moon gave orders for swift follow-up measures considering practical considerations prior to the North Korea-US summit. Moon is saying that just because North Korea is still under tough sanctions because of its nuclear weapon and missile programs does not mean that Seoul should stand by and do nothing. While Moon acknowledged that the government must distinguish between projects that can begin immediately and those that must wait for the right conditions, he said that even in the latter case the government should “begin with preliminary research.”

“Practically speaking, there are some things that will have to wait until the end of the North Korea-US summit. President Moon’s point is that we should quickly move forward with projects that are unrelated to sanctions on North Korea and do joint research on what kind of economic cooperation between South and North Korea are possible to prepare for areas like inter-Korean economic cooperation that will ease up down the road,” said a senior official at the Blue House.

During the meeting, Moon reportedly cited the example of trilateral economic cooperation between South Korea, North Korea and Russia, which came up during his phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin the day before.