hankyoreh

Participants speak in a panel on peace on the Korean Peninsula organized during the Hankyoreh-Busan International Symposium held on Wednesday at the Westin Josun Busan Hotel in Busan’s Haeundae District. (Kang Chang-kwang/The Hankyoreh)

The balmy winds that blew on the Korean Peninsula in the spring of 2018 lost their warmth when the North Korea-US summit in Hanoi in 2019 ended without a deal. While South Korea, North Korea and the US are still at an impasse, they’ve been eyeing a chance at another breakthrough following South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s proposal for an end-of-war declaration this past September. What lessons do the three sides need to learn in order to finally secure peace for the Korean Peninsula?

That was the question asked at the first session of the 2021 Hankyoreh-Busan International Symposium, which was held on Wednesday at the Westin Josun Busan Hotel in the port city’s Haeundae District under the theme of “Trio of Discontent: Why Peace Hasn’t Come to the Korean Peninsula.” The session was moderated by Chun Hae-sung, former vice minister of unification, with presentations by Li Tingting, professor at Peking University; Chin Hee-gwan, professor at Inje University; and Jenny Town, director of the 38 North website.

The biggest point of agreement between the presenters was that South Korea, North Korea and the US need to each work to build confidence and dispel the distrust that has deepened since the rupture at the Hanoi summit. Li Tingting argued that North Korea remained noncommittal about the proposal to formally end the Korean War, even after making what she called “a positive response,” because of the ambiguous North Korea policy of the Biden administration, which emphasizes human rights issues along with engagement with the North. Li noted that the North had said the prerequisites for an end-of-war declaration are the US retracting its “policy of hostility,” providing a guarantee of mutual respect and rescinding unfair double standards. The North would use that to gain more latitude, ask for more concrete steps toward ending the US’ “policy of hostility” and call for equal rights on missile launches and other issues, Li predicted.

Chin Hee-gwan underlined the internal changes that are taking place in North Korea, including its removal of language about “carrying out the task of a democratic revolution for the national liberation of the Korean people” from the rules of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) during the 8th WPK Congress in January. For Chin, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s declaration in October that the US is not the North’s principal enemy and the North’s submission of a voluntary national review to the UN in connection with the Sustainable Development Goals in July represent “surprising changes.” But because North Korea’s changes have counterparts, Chin said, “it’s important how we regard North Korea and whether we accept its changes as such.” He went on: “The biggest problem is that we don’t trust North Korea even when it removes language from its rules about carrying out a revolution in South Korea.”

Jenny Town said that since the one thing the US really wants from North Korea is denuclearization, it needs to fundamentally rethink its North Korea policy that has failed to achieve that goal. Noting that the US doesn’t regard North Korea as a normal state, she said that the US would keep economic sanctions on the North in place as long as the North possessed nuclear weapons. But research shows that sanctions have been effective in economic disputes but not so effective at forcing countries to change political decisions, she observed. Town also said the US needs to analyze why South Africa voluntarily gave up nuclear weapons and what North Korea would need to do the same.

Kim Dong-yup, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies and a discussant for the session, defined the inter-Korean relationship kindled by the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in 2018 as the true “beginning of peace” and underlined the importance of the “military approach” revealed in the inter-Korean military agreement reached on Sept. 19 of that year. The problems identified by Kim are the “peace through strength” approach and the South Korean government’s “prejudiced mediation” between North Korea and the US, which reflected baseless optimism. Cha Chang-hoon, a professor at Pusan National University, concluded that South Korea, North Korea and the US are each “trapped inside their own mythology.”

Kim Hyun-kyung, managing director of the Unification Broadcasting Research Center at MBC, observed that every round of negotiations during the 30 years since the North Korean nuclear issue arose had failed, which she blamed on the US’ short attention span. Kim advised the US to focus on the issue of denuclearization. If too many other issues — such as human rights — are placed on the agenda of the denuclearization talks, it ends up stoking skepticism about the fundamental question of what the US wants, she said.

By Kim Ji-eun, staff reporter

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