hankyoreh

foreign affairs

“We need solutions to both the [Korean] war-ending declaration issues and the [North Korean nuclear facility and material] disclosing and inspection issues to add new momentum to the Korean Peninsula peace process.”

This was the solution to the signs of a stalemate in the Korean Peninsula political situation suggested in an Aug. 6 conversation with The Hankyoreh by special presidential advisor on unification, foreign affairs, and national security Moon Chung-in and Sejong Institute senior research fellow and former Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok. The two differed slightly in their suggested approaches, with Moon favoring a methodology of “simultaneous exchange” and Lee one of using a war-ending declaration to generate momentum on the reporting/inspection issue.

Lee argued that the US has been “overeager on the denuclearization issue due to public opinion back home.”

“They urgently need to get their affairs in order in terms of what their goals are when it comes to North Korea, what kind of strategic choices they will have to make to achieve denuclearization, and what will actually help with denuclearization,” he suggested.

Moon argued that North Korea needs to “open up a space for South Korea, China, and Russia to reach the US [on the lifting of sanctions] by showing good faith on the key areas of interest for the US and the international community, which is reporting and inspection in connection with its ‘current nukes.’”

Necessity of ending Korean War within the year

According to Moon, the urgent order of business is “resolving the trust issue” - with Lee suggesting that Pyongyang and Washington try “thinking from the other side’s perspective.”

Moon and Lee noted that while the war-ending declaration has been both the most heated issue and the biggest stumbling block recently, it is “still necessary to have one within the year.” As a specific method of achieving it, they favored pursuing a quadrilateral declaration with China participating, suggesting that Seoul invite Chinese President Xi Jinping and ask him to play a catalyst role on the denuclearization and declaration issues.

Moon and Lee diagnosed the current political situation as one of the conflicts stemming from the “old language” of the senior officials in charge of negotiation, who have failed to keep up with the “new language” spoken by the South and North Korean and US leaders. They also called for resurrecting the flagging “Moon Jae-in initiative,” which contributed greatly to making the North Korea-US summit happen. In particular, they advised considering “one-point talks” along the lines of the May 26 Panmunjeom summit for some time around the end of August.

The three-hour conversation took place on the afternoon of Aug. 6 at the Kim Dae-jung Library in Seoul’s Mapo district. The interview was conducted by unification and foreign affairs team senior staff writer Lee Je-hun.

Special presidential advisor on unification

Hankyoreh (Hani): How would you assess the nature and characteristics of the current Korean Peninsula situation in broad terms?

Lee Jong-seok (Lee): If you view things in historical terms, there’s been a tremendous change in a short time. The situation of conflict and confrontation that arose around on the peninsula around the nuclear issue has clearly shifted to one of resolution and peace. But there’s still a tension between the structure and reality. Things have been strained due to old practices operating in a situation where momentum has not yet formed for talks in connection with new framework of perceptions, approaches, and solutions emphasized in the summits by President Moon, [North Korean leader] Kim Jong-un, and Trump.

I think things will be adjusted over time. President Moon’s commitment and resolution have played a big role in bringing things to this point. At the same time, it’s a bit worrying that the “Moon Jae-in initiative” seems to be losing steam lately. South Korea needs to feel like a meaningful presence between North Korea and the US, and things keep happening lately that suggest that’s not the case. We desperately need efforts to strengthen our role.

Moon Chung-in (Moon): The outline is fine; it’s the particulars that are the problem. The problem with the current political situation is the conflict that has been arising in the process of concretely implementing the outline. The leaders have set the right directions and trends in the outline with their political determinations. But the ministers and the working-level negotiators underneath them are in thrall to a bureaucratic understanding and inertia from the past. It’s the same for both North Korea and the US.

The New York Times recently observed that while President Trump has stated his willingness to have dialogue in general terms, people like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton are picking apart the particulars. It’s an assessment that makes a lot of sense. In North Korea as well, Chairman Kim Jong-un has met with South Korean and US presidents and spoken the new language, while negotiators like Workers’ Party of Korea vice chairman Kim Yong-chol and vice foreign minister Choe Son-hui haven’t been able to leave behind the old language.

Lee: They say the devil is in the details, but right now the bureaucrats are the details. Especially the officials in the US. (laughs)

Hani: There’s been a clear difference between Pyongyang and Washington on the methodology and sequence for implementing the Sentosa agreement from June 12.

Lee: In structural terms, President Trump has more freedom than Chairman Kim. Trump has gained far more than him to date. What Kim really wants has to do with the economy. In other words, he wants the sanctions lifted. If his only goal was regime security, he only needs nukes for that. He knows that to achieve his ultimate goal with the economy, there first need to be regime security guarantees and denuclearization talks. That’s why he’s taken measures such as a nuclear/missile [testing] moratorium and dismantling the nuclear test site at Punggye Village rather than talking about lifting sanctions. You could say he hasn’t really achieved anything practical apart from the suspension of joint South Korea-US military exercises.

In contrast, President Trump has gotten what the US has never been able to get before. At the same time, extreme positions in the US have been gaining traction – people claiming the summit was a failure and the Joint Declaration a mistake. It’s opinions like those that are making the officials like Secretary Pompeo so anxious, which leads them to fall back on old practices. That’s why the US is viewing the situation solely in terms of the denuclearization schedule.

At its root, the current deadlock in North Korea-US relations stems from a combination of US unilateralism and North Korea holding out. To implement the Joint Declaration, the two sides are going to need to sort out the sequence again in terms of implementing the agreement. The US in particular needs to figure out what its real goal is. For example, a war-ending declaration would provide Chairman Kim Jong-un with a justification for meaningful denuclearization measures.

And because abandonment of nuclear weapons would hurt the institutional interests of the North Korean military, there also needs to be something to give the military. They’ll be able to justify things to the North Korean public: “Now that we have a declaration ending the war with the US, we don’t need nuclear weapons anymore.” The war-ending declaration isn’t a tool for negotiation with the US. It’s a focus of joint efforts as something to hasten denuclearization.

Moon: North Korea has said that a war-ending declaration would be a token of the “new North Korea-US relations” referred to in the Joint Declaration. So far, it hasn’t been talking about having sanctions lifted.

I think Pyongyang thought that if there were a declaration ending the war, it would take denuclearization measures accordingly, a resolution to (partially) lift sanctions would be pursued by China and Russia in the UN Security Council, and South Korea might get on board to persuade the US and Japan. That’s why it has been talking about the declaration and making gestures toward a new relationship – things like dismantling the nuclear test site at Punggye Village and the West Sea satellite launch site at Tongchang Village or repatriating 55 sets of remains from soldiers who died in the Korean War. Yet the US has refused. That’s the source of the conflict.

We should remember the suggestion of Philip Zelikow, a State Department advisor during the second Bush administration, who said the nuclear issue needs to be resolved in the context of a comprehensive peace progress. Zelikow has proposed an approach of simultaneous, multi-level practice. He’s saying that since the nuclear issue isn’t all there is to the Korean Peninsula peace progress, we ought to put everything else into a single basket – inter-Korean issues, a Korean Peninsula peace regime, energy and economic cooperation as North Korea undertakes reforms and openness, humanitarian aid, human rights issues, and Northeast Asian security cooperation – rather than being bound by that one thing. It’s about keeping things on a stable footing and improving the situation by allowing the other stuff to come first or later, even if the nuclear negotiations aren’t working out.

From that standpoint, I think the South Korean government is doing a pretty good job. It’s been going in a pretty forward-looking direction on matters like withdrawing guard posts (GPs) from the Demilitarized Zone according to Article 2 of the Apr. 27 Panmunjeom Declaration (on reducing military tensions and the threat of war). It’s also doing a good job with the terms in Article 1 (improving inter-Korean relations), such as hooking up the West Sea military communication line and organizing reunions for divided family members.

Inter-Korean relations will also improve if the government moves quickly to open up the inter-Korean joint liaison office at Kaesong and works actively to implement the first two articles of the Panmunjeom Declaration. In that case, it will be able to play a role between Pyongyang and Washington. Instead of staking everything on denuclearization, a better approach to diversify the agenda and working on solving a lot of different things at once. That’s the core of Zelikow’s idea.

Lee: I think you may be speaking a bit cautiously because you’re a presidential advisor. (laughs) At the current stage, I think we have to ask whether what we’ve called the “Moon Jae-in initiative,” where the South Korean government has been priming the pump, still has the power [to achieve a breakthrough]. If South Korea is going to win over North Korea and the US, it needs ideas. We could end up butting heads with North Korea during the persuasion process, and the US could reject it. But we can’t afford to back down.

A few days ago, a Blue House spokesperson publicly stated that “North Korea needs to pursue denuclearization, while the US needs to pursue corresponding measures.” It’s an absolutely reasonable thing to say. I don’t know if they’re taking their cues from the US or what, but the ministries themselves aren’t actually saying things like that publicly. Other than the Blue House, has any ministry in the South Korean government said things like that?

For us to have leverage on North Korea, we will need to play a meaningful role between Pyongyang and Washington. Everyone’s been talking about cooperation between Seoul and Washington, but we need to be able to say what we have to say. You need to accept at least two to three out of ten things for it to be called “cooperation.” If we give up on something because the US says no, that isn’t cooperation. We need to be strong about pushing through with the things we see as important.

Former Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok talks about inter-Korean and North Korea-US relations at the Kim Dae Jung Library in Seoul on Aug. 15

Hani: It’s been over 100 days since the Panmunjeom Declaration. How would you assess the current state of inter-Korean relations?

Lee: In terms of improving inter-Korean relations, North Korea still hasn’t presented any demands beyond UNSC sanctions. But I do think Pyongyang is annoyed with how overly cautious they see Seoul as being in discussing the end, putting too much on the North Korea sanctions in areas like railway, road, and forestry cooperation to implement the Panmunjeom Declaration. North Korea is thinking, “So what exactly is it you propose we do?” In that sense, inter-Korean relations are on an awkward footing.

Here’s an example. Because of sanctions, the [South Korean] government can’t currently resume operation of the Kaesong Industrial Complex or tourist at Mt. Keumgang. But they could do something like allow the business owners to go into the complex and check to see if the machinery is in good shape. Yet they won’t approve visits by those business owners because they say it will “send the wrong message.”

They also need to use the Mt. Keumgang region to promote active exchange in areas that are not subject to sanctions. Just as there’s no problem with [US] goods entering the North for the repatriation and excavation of US POW and MIA remains, we need to see to it that people don’t worry too much about the minimum level of materials going into North Korea for inter-Korean cooperation efforts aimed at stabilizing the Korean Peninsula situation and establishing peace.

Moon: It may not be to the level North Korea wants, but South Korea is honoring the first two articles of the Panmunjeom Declaration in spite of the US’s pressure and sanctions. The third article has to do with denuclearization. Instead of one-sidedly criticizing the South, North Korea needs to think about what it should be doing itself. We’re a UN member state. We can’t disregard international sanctions as a practical constraint. North Korea also needs to provide the South with justification. It needs to agree to reporting and inspections, helping to create an environment where South Korea can win over the US and Japan and join China and Russia in pursuing the adoption of a resolution to loosen [the sanctions].

Hani: The most debated issue recently seems to be the end-of-war declaration. The situation is gradually becoming more complicated because of the China factor and the American strategy of turning that into a bargaining chip. What do you thing the ideal approach is?

Moon: President Moon has described the end-of-war declaration as being a kind of “political symbol.” Even President Trump initially promised to end the Korean War, and North Korea didn’t seem to put too much significance on the end-of-war declaration. But more recently, North Korea and the US are turning the end-of-war declaration into a difficult problem. As Ambassador Harry Harris said, the US thinks it needs to be cautious about an end-of-war declaration because it would be irrevocable, while North Korea appears to regard it as a rather important document that would define its relations with the US.

Some time ago, I met an official from China’s Foreign Ministry who pointed out that an end-of-war declaration would change the legal status of the armistice agreement. Since China is a legal party and South Korea a de facto party to that agreement, the official said, China won’t allow the status of the armistice agreement to be changed without its involvement. Strictly speaking, an end-of-war declaration represents the prologue to a peace treaty, and I think it would be best for China to take part.

Lee: The issue of the end-of-war declaration is becoming an obstacle to making progress in the current situation. It’s said that the devil is in the details, and currently those details are American government officials. Those officials have created this narrative in which declaring the war to be over before denuclearization has occurred would place limitations on the military option. And on top of that you have the China factor.

While it might be possible for the three parties of South Korea, North Korea and the US to issue an end-of-war declaration, it’s risky in terms of the national interest for the South Korean government to continue advocating this publicly. That could cause China to infer that Seoul is taking the lead in sidelining China. Indeed, China-South Korea relations became quite chilly while Seoul was publicly advocating a three-party end-of-war declaration. Over the course of three summits, North Korea and China appear to be moving toward a four-party end-of-war declaration.

Moon: One of the reasons we included the phrase about declaring the war over before the end of the year in the Panmunjom Declaration was our desire to correct hostile relations, of course, but just as important was our desire to push North Korea’s denuclearization rapidly forward. But the US thinks that China has been manipulating North Korea behind the scenes [regarding the end-of-war declaration]. We need to quickly dispel that misunderstanding. That’s why I think that pushing for an end-of-war declaration with all four parties – South Korea, North Korea, the US and China – may be our best option.

China is the country that has the most influence on North Korea. If China can be brought into a four-party framework through which it can have substantial deliberations with North Korea, that might lead to a solution to the end-of-war declaration and create momentum for denuclearization, too. If we recall that the US and China are also in the middle of a severe trade conflict, a meeting between the four leaders designed to formally end the war on the Korean Peninsula could engineer a turnaround in China-US relations, too.

Lee: I agree. Why don’t we persuade Chinese President Xi Jinping to serve as a facilitator for denuclearization by participating in the end-of-war declaration?

Moon: At the point in time when North Korea discloses its nuclear facilities and allows inspections, my understanding is that the South Korean government had been planning to convene the UN Security Council and propose that it discuss ways to adopt a resolution that would relax sanctions since North Korea was taking significant measures toward denuclearization. This had apparently already been discussed with the American government. But we’ve run into a deadlock because North Korea says the end-of-war declaration must come before the disclosure and inspections. We need a threefold approach.

First, North Korea needs to show its sincerity to give the governments of South Korea, China and Russia an opportunity to sway the US. Second, and this is what Philip Zelikow proposed, the international community needs to start discussing how to support and work with North Korea when it takes steps toward reform and opening instead of focusing solely on denuclearization and maintaining sanctions. Third, we need to exercise our leadership by improving inter-Korean relations in areas such as exchange and cooperation.

Lee: North Korea appears to have initially framed its plans on the assumption that at least sanctions affecting the public livelihood could be lifted this fall. But it’s run into an impasse on the end-of-war declaration. Since North Korea eventually managed to frame denuclearization as a process, it probably thinks that sanctions will be lifted in stages, too. North Korea began by demanding a “phased and synchronous” solution, of course, and it will probably conclude that sanctions have to be lifted in the same way. There are people who regard the North’s “phased and synchronous” solution as an attempt to buy time, but that’s a misreading.

During a plenary session of the central committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea on Apr. 20, Kim Jong-un shifted to a strategy that bets everything on the economy. Chinese theorists regarded this as a declaration of reform and opening. They think the mood now is similar to the 3rd Plenary Session in 1978, which was a historical watershed in China’s reform and opening. Kim has recently been inspecting economic sites in the north, giving those sites target schedules and promising to support them, and that can’t happen without money. Kim is aware of that, too.

Where is that money going to come from? What this means is that Kim isn’t thinking about a long timetable for denuclearization. Furthermore, the international community has kept calling for North Korea’s reform and opening up, but right now the economic sanctions are keeping that from happening. We need to think about how to turn this into a virtuous cycle.

Moon: There’s something that North Korea misunderstands. It seems to expect that the US will lift sanctions if the North demonstrates its sincerity through such measures as dismantling its nuclear test site at Punggye Village, shutting down its missile engine test site at Tongchang Village and destroying some of its ICBM launchers. The measures it has taken so far signal that it won’t develop nuclear weapons in the future.

But the key item of interest for the US and the rest of the international community is the disclosure and inspection of the North’s current nuclear weapons and missiles. That’s a different calculus. If North Korea shows interest and sincerity, South Korea, China and Russia can work to push for a resolution that would ease sanctions and create some momentum.

Lee: That’s an important observation. I think that if North Korea makes a series of positive steps toward disclosure and inspections, it could gain relief from the first stage of sanctions on the public livelihood. We need to persuade the US to allow the end-of-war declaration and simultaneously convince North Korea to naturally proceed to disclosure and inspections after that declaration.

Hani: Let’s look at the question of the fall summit in Pyongyang that was specified in the Panmunjom Declaration.

Moon: There’s no need to get hung up on the words “fall” and “Pyongyang.” After the Panmunjom summit on Apr. 27, another summit was held there on May 26 at Kim’s request, after all. This time around it’s Kim’s turn to accede to Moon’s proposal. It would be nice if improving inter-Korean relations would enable economic cooperation between the two sides to kick off this fall. But there won’t be any momentum for denuclearization if an end-of-war declaration doesn’t happen, so the important thing is to have a summit, regardless of whether that’s in Panmunjom or Pyongyang. I think that later August or early September would be appropriate.

Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha mentioned the idea of holding an event in New York around the time of the UN General Assembly in late September. The South and North Korean leaders need to hash things out prior to that. The only way for us to get leverage over the US is for Moon to exploit smooth inter-Korean communication to create the impression that Kim is talking to us all the time. We can use that leverage to win over Trump.

Lee: We need to have that “fall summit in Pyongyang.” Fall lasts until the end of November. That means there’s no need to rush things. Without any results, a summit could actually be a problem. But given the current difficulties, it might be possible to hold a single-issue summit kind of like the May 26 summit around the end of August [in addition to the fall summit].

But even with a single-issue summit, it wouldn’t be wise for Moon to meet Kim empty-handed. In fact, the lack of progress on the end-of-war declaration – which has been a major stumbling block recently – is due to the US. We need to make some sweeping discussions with the US not only about the end-of-war declaration but also about lifting the first level of sanctions [which would be possible if the North agrees to disclosure and inspections]. We need to press hard on this, even if it makes the US uncomfortable. That would give Moon something to offer Kim when they meet and Moon urges Kim to make a difficult decision.

By Noh Ji-won, staff reporter, and Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer 　

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