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US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un smile after signing a joint statement at Singapore’s Capella hotel on June 12. (provided by The Straits Times)

At the risk of excessive simplification, the denuclearization process envisioned during the “meeting of the century” between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump in Singapore on June 12 can be provisionally conceptualized as “voluntary denuclearization.” Put another way, this method consists of Kim Jong-un being the first to take action and Trump responding in kind.

This essentially constitutes a move away from the principle of “promise for promise” and “action for action” in the Sept. 19 Joint Statement, which resulted from the Six-Party Talks in 2005, which was based on the idea of an eye for an eye, and toward the principle of reciprocity. This can be seen as a paradigm shift from a fundamentally negative view of human nature to a fundamentally positive one. The principle of “word for word, action for action” had been particularly stressed by the North Koreans.

During the press conference that was held after Trump and Kim signed and released a joint statement, for example, Trump responded to reporters’ repeated questions about what happened to CVID by saying that he really trusts Kim, that he would not have signed the statement it he did not trust him and that Kim had confirmed his willingness to denuclearize.

“We have sometimes been held back by mistakes and blinded and deafened by poor practices. The world will see a major change,” Kim said, underlining his resolve.

To be sure, neither Kim nor Trump made any substantial concessions – which for might have been nuclear warheads for Kim and normalizing relations with the North or lifting economic sanctions for Trump. But the two leaders nevertheless regarded their meeting as successful, apparently because of their rapport. Just because there was no announcement of concrete and revolutionary steps for denuclearization does not mean that the summit should be written off as a nothing burger.

There were exactly three sentences about denuclearization in the joint statement that was released after Kim and Trump’s summit: two in the introduction and one in the body. The goal is defined in Paragraph 3: “Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work towards complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

Article 3, Paragraph 4, of the Panmunjeom Declaration states that “South and North Korea confirmed the common goal of realizing, through complete denuclearization, a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.”

Whereas “complete denuclearization” is a nod to CVID, “a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula” is drawn from the Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula (adopted on Dec. 31, 1991). The Joint Declaration states that “South and North Korea shall not test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons” (Article 1) or “possess nuclear reprocessing and uranium enrichment facilities” (Article 3).

North Korea and the US’s attitude and methodology toward achieving the goal of denuclearization are contained in two phrases in the introduction to the joint statement. The key words here are “reciprocity” and “confidence.” The phrase “Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” is combined with the phrase “President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to the DPRK” to form a single sentence.

This represents a trade of denuclearization for security, or in other words “reciprocity.” Furthermore, the phrase “recognizing that mutual confidence building can promote the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” appears in the same sentence with the phrase “convinced that the establishment of new US-DPRK relations will contribute to the peace and prosperity of the Korean Peninsula and of the world.”

The key momentum and methodology for the denuclearization process that Kim and Trump shared in their one-on-one meeting ultimately boils down to denuclearization through mutual confidence building. This implies retaining the same method used previously, while speeding it up a little.

During the 3rd Plenary Session of the 7th Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea on Apr. 20, for example, Kim declared the end of the “two-track” course of building the economy and a nuclear arsenal, halted tests of nuclear weapons and the test launch of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and promised to dismantle his northern nuclear test site, a promise he followed through on. And then on May 10, Trump confirmed and announced the time and location of his summit with Kim.

“Chairman Kim has told me that North Korea is already destroying a major missile engine testing site. [. . .] As soon as he arrives, he’s going to start a process that’s going to make a lot of people very happy,” Trump said during the press conference.

“It does take a long time to pull off complete denuclearization. [. . .] We will do it as fast as it can mechanically and physically be done. [. . .] The sanctions will come off when we are sure that the nukes are no longer a factor,” Trump added.

“Trump appears to have bought into the ‘voluntary denuclearization’ method that Kim has proposed. I expect that Kim will soon be taking some quite groundbreaking steps based on the outcome of this meeting,” said former Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok.

By Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer

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