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South Korean President Moon Jae-in presides over a National Security Council meeting at the Blue House on Mar. 4. (Blue House photo pool)

On Mar. 4, South Korean President Moon Jae-in made preventing North Korea-US dialogue from being derailed a top policy priority. This shift in priority appears to have been motivated by concerns that North Korea and the US’ failure to reach an agreement in their recent summit could cause the situation to spiral out of control. In particular, Moon strongly argued that the South Korean government must ensure it doesn’t miss the “golden time” for tackling the crisis in North Korea-US dialogue with his remark that “it only takes a moment for things to fall apart.”

While presiding over a meeting of South Korea’s National Security Council (NSC) on Monday, Moon said, “What’s even more urgent than drawing up a mediation plan is ensuring that the US and North Korea both stay in the dialogue. We must patiently do our best to ensure that neither of them withdraw.” It isn’t clear whether Moon was specifically briefed on any unusual signs from North Korea or the US. But considering that Moon has hitherto maintained an optimistic outlook on North Korea-US dialogue, the very fact that he made such remarks can be regarded as a shift in outlook. The fact that this meeting of the National Security Council continued for the unusual length of some 100 minutes also illustrates the severity of the situation.

During the meeting, Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon said that Ministry officials would deliberate with the US about devising ways to resume operations at the Kaesong Industrial Complex and tourism at Mt. Kumgang, while Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo said that inter-Korean military talks would be held in March to draw up a plan to implement the Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA), which was signed on Sept. 19, 2018. The government seems determined to focus on expanding contact with North Korea and using inter-Korean relations as leverage to keep the situation under control.

If operations at the Kaesong Complex and tourism to Mt. Kumgang are resumed, it might go some way toward relieving pressure on North Korea, which aggressively pushed the US to ease sanctions affecting the people’s livelihood during the two countries’ summit in Hanoi. But this doesn’t seem likely, considering that even after Hanoi, the US has indicated that it means to be even tougher about implementing the current sanctions, though it’s not planning to impose additional ones.

Holding inter-Korean military talks in March appears to represent the effort to continue easing military tensions by speeding up the implementation of the CMA, which had been delayed until after the North Korea-US summit. If South and North Korea maintain their military contact by discussing military agenda items such as the joint recovery of remains in the DMZ and free navigation at the mouth of the Han River, it will be possible to manage the situation, at least to some extent.

According to Moon, the second North Korea-US summit had its share of results. “The complete dismantlement of the Yongbyon nuclear complex has been discussed and brought out into the open. If those facilities were totally and completely dismantled, North Korea’s denuclearization could be regarding as entering an irreversible phase,” Moon said.

Moon noted that North Korea and the US had discussed lifting some economic sanctions and setting up a US liaison office inside the North. “That’s very significant, since it represents major progress in dialogue and is an important step toward normalizing relations between the two countries.”

“Since the leaders of North Korea and the US didn’t criticize each other, expressed their unchanging trust without raising tensions and made clear their commitment to resolving the North Korean nuclear issue through dialogue, we’re able to hope that this summit is another step toward a bigger agreement,” Moon also said.

Trump asked Moon to serve as mediator seven times

It’s also quite likely that Moon will have a meeting with Kim, rather like the second inter-Korean summit in Panmunjom last year. Participants at a meeting of the Speaker of the National Assembly and the heads of the five ruling and opposition parties on Monday quoted Democratic Party leader Lee Hae-chan as saying, “During a 25-minute phone call with President Moon [shortly after the North Korea-US summit], President Trump asked President Moon no fewer than seven times to play a role as mediator and to figure out Chairman Kim’s true intentions.”

It’s possible that a South Korea-US summit will be organized soon. Some are predicting that Blue House National Security Office Director Chung Eui-yong will serve as a special envoy between North Korea and the US as he did during the process of arranging the Singapore summit last year.

By Seong Yeon-cheol and Song Gyung-hwa, staff reporters

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