Kim Jong-un declines to visit Busan for S. Korea-ASEAN summit

Posted on : 2019-11-22 16:02 KST Modified on : 2019-11-22 16:06 KST
KCNA says Moon sent Kim a letter of invitation
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during the former’s visit to Pyongyang on Sept. 18, 2018. (Blue House photo pool)
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during the former’s visit to Pyongyang on Sept. 18, 2018. (Blue House photo pool)

North Korea said on Nov. 21 that it hoped South Korea would understand that it was unable to find a “proper reason” for leader Kim Jong-un to travel to Busan to attend the South Korea-ASEAN summit.

“On November 5, South Korean President Moon Jae-in politely sent [. . .] us a personal letter earnestly inviting the Chairman of the State Affairs Commission (SAC) [Kim Jong-un] of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea [North Korea] to be present in the special summit [between South Korea and ASEAN],” North Korea said in a statement released by its state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). The statement explained that Kim had ultimately decided not to visit Busan, despite Moon’s personal appeal.

Moon reportedly sent the letter containing the invitation as a response to a message of condolence that Kim had sent upon the occasion of the death of Moon’s mother.

The KCNA statement voiced gratitude for the invitation. “There is no reason for us not to be grateful for it, if the personal letter contained the sincere trust in the SAC Chairman and [an] invitation carrying earnest expectation.”

“We also fully understand the distress and agony of President Moon Jae-in to [find an] opportunity to make [. . .] a new occasion for [resolving] the present North-South relations,” the statement went on to say.

North also refuses to spend special envoy

In short, though Kim is unable to accept Moon’s invitation to visit Busan, he is grateful for Moon’s sincerity and understands Moon’s “distress and agony.” The statement turned down the invitation with some degree of courtesy. This appears to indicate that Moon and Kim still have a trusting relationship of sorts even as inter-Korean relations continue to deteriorate since North Korea and the US’ inconclusive second summit in Hanoi, with neither side able to engineer a breakthrough.

The South Korean government’s hopes that Kim might visit Busan for the South Korea-ASEAN summit had already faded. The fact that Kim won’t be attending, therefore, is not a big surprise.

That being said, Seoul had explored various ways to make the special summit an opportunity to reverse the chill in inter-Korean relations. Even while making the preparations necessary for Kim visiting Busan, South Korea had also floated the idea of Kim sending special envoys. For example, South Korea used private channels to propose a visit by Choe Ryong-hae, president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly and the second most powerful person in North Korea, and Kim Yo-jong, first vice director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea and Kim Jong-un’s only living relative.

But even that proved unacceptable to Kim Jong-un. The KCNA said that Moon’s anguish “can be known from the fact that in the wake of the personal letter, there were several earnest requests for sending even a special envoy, if the SAC Chairman could not come.” This remark serves as a roundabout answer to South Korea’s proposal for a visit by special envoys.

As for why Kim refused not only to visit Busan himself but even to send special envoys, the KCNA reiterated that “it is important to choose the proper time and place, if everything is to be done well.” North Korea’s position, as expressed in the statement, is that the current situation, the timing, and the occasion (a multilateral summit) are all inappropriate for holding an inter-Korean summit or dispatching special envoys.

“We cannot but think whether the present moment is a suitable time for the top leaders of the North and the South to meet,” the KCNA said in connection with this. In support of that conclusion, North Korea offered the following three arguments.

Anti-N. Korean sentiment among S. Korean conservatives and Seoul’s reliance on Washington

First is the strong anti-North Korean sentiment voiced by the Liberty Korea Party (LKP) and other conservative groups in South Korea. “But the beclouded air of South Korea is so skeptical about North-South relations,” the KCNA said. “The South Korean conservative forces have become zealous in their censure and attack on the DPRK, calling for ‘scrapping [. . .] the North-South agreement,’ not content with slandering the present South Korean regime as ‘pro-North regime’ and ‘left-wing regime.’” According to this argument, the anti-North Korean mood among the conservatives, including the LKP, is an obstacle to Kim visiting the South.

Second is the attitude of the Moon administration. “The stark reality today,” the KCNA said, is that “the South Korean authorities are still [holding to] the misguided [stance] of settling all [. . .] issues arising in relations between the North and the South in reliance on outsiders, not national cooperation.”

The KCNA also accused South Korean Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul of “begging” when he met with key figures in the US government and Congress to discuss ways to improve inter-Korean relations and make progress in North Korea-US negotiations during a trip to the US.

N. Korea calls for another opportunity at “proper time and place”

Third is the fact that the summit in Busan is a multilateral meeting. The KCNA said it felt “dubious” about South Korea making an “offer for discussing [. . .] North-South relations in the theatre of multilateral cooperation,” adding that “we will never follow without reason the impure attempt of the South side [. . .] to insert the North-South issue [into] the corner of the ‘neo-southern policy’ masterminded by it.” The implication here is that Kim isn’t interested in visiting South Korea when he’s not the star of the show, but just one of several government leaders.

In fact, the ASEAN leaders who are attending the Busan summit were reportedly not universally pleased by Moon’s plan to invite Kim Jong-un. The leaders were concerned that, if Kim or a special envoy actually visited Busan, the issue of South cooperation between South Korea and ASEAN, which is the point of the summit, would fall off the radar of public attention, sources say.

After listing these reasons, the KCNA compared Moon’s invitation to “watering a withered tree” while remarking that the “time and place” were not “suitable.”

“As nothing was achieved in implementing the agreements made in Panmunjom, Pyongyang, and Mt. Paektu, [holding a] North-South summit for [. . .] mere form's sake would be pointless,” the KCNA added.

Conversely, the statement can be taken as a call for creating another opportunity at the “proper time and place.” One of the agreements reached during the inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang on Sept. 19, 2018, was for Kim to pay a visit to Seoul before long.

By Lee Je-hun, senior staff writer

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

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