hankyoreh

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un

Following North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s New Year’s address on June 1 and throughout the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, the ship of Korean Peninsula affairs was sailing smoothly with a favorable wind at its back, but a contrary wind began blowing on May 16. North Korea sent tough warning messages first to the South Korean government under President Moon Jae-in and then to the US government under President Donald Trump.

A green light for North Korea’s relations with South Korea and with the US had stayed on since January, but now that light has suddenly switched to yellow. Analysts are divided about whether the green light will blink back on or whether it will be replaced by a red light as the situation gets even worse.

Since the summit between Moon and Trump that is scheduled to take place in Washington on May 22 coincides with developments in back-room negotiations for the Kim-Trump summit and North Korea’s internal assessment of those developments, North Korea’s warning messages are expected to have a major impact on peninsula affairs. They could also affect the public shutdown of the North’s “northern nuclear test site” in Punggye Village, Kilju County, North Hamgyong Province, which is scheduled to be held between May 23 and 25.

At 12:30 am on May 16, North Korea announced the “delay” of the high-level inter-Korean talks supposed to be held that same day, and North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said after 11 am that the North might “reconsider” the summit with the US scheduled to take place in Singapore on June 12.

The first message was read over the telephone at 12:30 am by Ri Son-gwon, chair of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland and North Korea’s chief envoy to the talks, to his counterpart in the dialogue, South Korean Unification Minister Cho Myung-gyon. The second message, on the other hand, took the form of a statement by Kim Kye-gwan, the North’s First Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, which a former senior government official described as a “very unique format suggesting that elaborate care was taken about its level of formality.”

While the two messages need to be analyzed separately because they were sent and received by different parties, they are also connected. The key points North Korea wanted to convey through the statements are a refusal to make unilateral concessions and a demand for the end of hostile activity against the North.

First of all, the North took issue with two things when it delayed the high-level inter-Korean talks. The first of these was the Max Thunder joint air force exercises between South Korea and the US that involved the US’s top-of-the-line F-22 Raptor stealth fighter. The second was “Kim Jong-un bashing” by Thae Yong-ho, a former minister-level embassy diplomat at the North Korean Embassy to the UK (though the North referred to Thae as “human trash” rather than by name). The North described this as “stirring up a confrontation” and “imprudent instigation of an invasion of the North.”

“The responsibility lies with the government of South Korea, which has been completely preoccupied with trivial affairs. The US [. . .] also needs to ponder the fate of the North Korea-US summit,” North Korea said.

The primary target of this criticism was the South Korean government.

But the statement by Kim Kye-gwan, which was released by the KCNA more than ten hours later, took direct aim at the Trump administration. The North’s fusillade was unleashed at White House National Security Advisor John Bolton, who openly proposed the Libyan approach and said that the North must dismantle its nuclear weapons and ship them to the US to be destroyed before sanctions can be lifted.

No mention was made of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has spoken and negotiated with Kim Jong-un on two occasions. In his statement Kim declared that if the US tries “to drive us into a corner to force our unilateral nuclear abandonment, we will no longer be interested in such dialogue and cannot but reconsider our proceeding to the DPRK-US summit.”

“I cannot suppress indignation at such moves of the US, and harbor doubt about the US sincerity for improved DPRK-US relations through sound dialogue and negotiations,” North Korea’s statement said, adding that “If the Trump administration takes an approach to the DPRK-US summit with sincerity for improved DPRK-US relations, it will receive a deserved response from us.”

On the evening of May 16, the KCNA once again attacked the Max Thunder exercises as being “the largest in history, to which the US dispatched strategic nuclear assets such as B-52 strategic nuclear bombers and F-22 Raptor stealth fighters.” But the South Korean military confirmed that B-52s did not participate in the exercises.

Kim Jong-un reached an agreement with Moon during the inter-Korean summit on Apr. 27 that was expressed in the Panmunjeom Declaration, and he has repeatedly and clearly supported the basic principle and methodology of improving relations with the US.

In the three-clause Panmunjeom Declaration, Kim and Moon declared that “there will be no more war on the Korean Peninsula.” In the three clauses of Article 2 and the four clauses of Article 3, the two leaders promised to halt all hostile activities and to bring about “complete denuclearization” and “a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.”

Even while confirming that “complete denuclearization” and “a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula” are their joint goals, the two leaders expressed this in a subsection (Clause 4) of Article 3, which promised to end the armistice and establish a lasting peace. And during Kim’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Dalian on May 7 and 8, Kim said that “North Korea would not need to have nuclear weapons if the hostile policy and security threats against it were eliminated” and laid out a plan for mutual trust through North Korea-US dialogue, gradual and simultaneous measures, and the full-scale promotion of a process toward a political solution.

This helps explain why North Korea described Max Thunder as “an overt provocation against the Panmunjeom Declaration” and argues that the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is of equivalent value to “bringing an end to the US’s hostile policy and its nuclear threats and blackmail toward North Korea,” to borrow an expression from Kim Kye-gwan’s statement.

“North Korea’s message should be interpreted not as an attempt to spoil the mood but rather as encouragement to do a better job,” said a former senior official who is well-informed of Korean Peninsula affairs.

“We should pay attention to the fact that North Korea chose the unique format of ‘an official’s personal statement’ under the name of Kim Kye-gwan, a symbolic figure in North Korea-US nuclear talks. This format is clearly less official than a statement by the government or by the Foreign Ministry, but it also has more reach than a column signed by a private individual,” this official said.

But considering that recent developments on the Korean Peninsula have followed a “top-down” approach that is driven by political decisions by Moon, Kim and Trump, the general view of experts is that this trend will not be reversed. This was reflected in the South Korean government’s internal assessment of the situation, which was laid out by Blue House Senior Secretary for Public Affairs Yoon Young-chan on the afternoon of May 16: “We regard the current situation as the challenge of getting on the same page and the struggle to achieve good results.”

The government compared the disagreement between North Korea and the US to “birth pangs” that are an unavoidable part of reaching the historic accomplishment of “complete denuclearization” and “a solution to hostile relations between North Korea and the US.”

Both Seoul and Washington are being extremely circumspect in their response to North Korea’s statements. In a statement by the spokesperson of the Unification Ministry, the South Korean government emphasized its “firm determination to implement the Panmunjeom Declaration” and stated that it would “take the necessary measures through close deliberations between related ministries.”

During a phone call with South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha, Pompeo said that the US would continue to prepare for its summit with North Korea while keeping an eye on the North’s actions.

“We’re still hopeful that the meeting will take place and we’ll continue down that path, but at the same time, we’ve been prepared that these could be tough negotiations,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in an interview with Fox News.

By Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer

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

Kim Kye Gwan, the first vice-minister of Foreign Affairs of the DPRK, made public the following press statement on May 16:

Kim Jong Un, the chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, made a strategic decision to put an end to the unpleasant steps for peace and stability in the Korean peninsula and the world.

In response to the noble intention of Chairman Kim Jong Un, President Trump stated his position for terminating the historically deep-rooted hostility and improving the relations between DPRK and the U.S.

I appreciated the position positively with an expectation that upcoming DPRK-U.S. summit would be a big step forward for catalyzing detente on the Korean peninsula and building a great future.

But now prior to the DPRK-U.S. summit, unbridled remarks provoking the other side of dialogue are recklessly made in the U.S. and I am totally disappointed as these constitute extremely unjust behavior.

High-ranking officials of the White House and the Department of State including Bolton, White House national security adviser, are letting loose the assertions of so-called Libya mode of nuclear abandonment, “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization,” “total decommissioning of nuclear weapons, missiles and biochemical weapons” etc. while talking about formula of “abandoning nuclear weapons first, compensating afterwards.”

This is not an expression of intention to address the issue through dialogue. It is essentially a manifestation of awfully sinister move to impose on our dignified state the destiny of Libya or Iraq which had been collapsed due to yielding the whole of their countries to big powers.

I cannot suppress indignation at such moves of the U.S., and harbor doubt about the U.S. sincerity for improved DPRK-U.S. relations through sound dialogue and negotiations.

World knows too well that our country is neither Libya nor Iraq which have met miserable fate.

It is absolutely absurd to dare compare the DPRK, a nuclear weapon state, to Libya which had been at the initial state of nuclear development.

We shed light on the quality of Bolton already in the past, and we do not hide our feelings of repugnance towards him.

If the Trump administration fails to recall the lessons learned from the past when the DPRK-U.S. talks had to undergo twists and setbacks owing to the likes of Bolton and turns its ear to the advice of quasi-”patriots” who insist on Libya mode and the like, prospects of upcoming DPRK-U.S. summit and overall DPRK-U.S. relations will be crystal clear.

We have already stated our intention of denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and made clear on several occasions that precondition for denuclearization is to put an end to anti-DPRK hostile policy and nuclear threats and blackmail of the United States.

But now, the U.S. is miscalculating the magnanimity and broad-minded initiatives of the DPRK as signs of weakness and trying to embellish and advertise as if these are the product of its sanctions and pressure.

The U.S. is trumpeting as if it would offer economic compensation and benefit in case we abandon nuke. But we have never had any expectation of U.S. support in carrying out our economic construction and will not at all make such a deal in future, too.

It is a ridiculous comedy to see that the Trump administration, claiming to take a different road from the previous administrations, still clings to the outdated policy on the DPRK - a policy pursured by previous administrations at the same time when the DPRK was at the stage of nuclear development.

If President Trump follows in the footsteps of his predecessors, he will be recorded as more tragic and unsuccessful president than his predecessors, far from his initial ambition to make unprecedented success.

If the Trump administration takes an approach to the DPRK-U.S. summit with sincerity for improved DPRK-U.S. relations, it will receive a deserved response from us. However, if the U.S. is trying to drive us into a corner to force our unilateral nuclear abandonment, we will no longer be interested in such dialogue and cannot but reconsider our proceeding to the DPRK-U.S. summit.