By Kim Jae-kyoung
The United States should never sign a peace treaty with North Korea just to control the reclusive country’s nuclear threats, experts on the North warned Wednesday.
The warning comes after Pyongyang conducted its sixth nuclear test Sunday, the most powerful one to date, claiming it successfully exploded a hydrogen bomb that was small enough to be loaded onto its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
With the North closer to becoming a nuclear weapons state, there is growing expectation that Pyongyang will demand a peace treaty with Washington by calling for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea and a guarantee of the regime’s security.
The experts said such a move would be North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s strategy to delegitimize South Korea and make any affairs on the Korean Peninsula a U.S.-North Korea bilateral issue.
“(The U.S.) signing a peace treaty with the North is just about the worst thing we could do,” Sean King, a New York-based political analyst and East Asia specialist, told The Korea Times.
He pointed out that the Korean War started after North Korea attacked the South and hence any agreement should be between the two Koreas.
“The North would never go for that because it would debunk the Kim Jong-un regime’s false ultranationalist Korean narrative that it is the only legitimate government for the entire peninsula,” he said.
In King’s view, a North Korean precondition for any bogus peace treaty would surely be the removal of U.S. troops from South Korea and an end to the U.S.-South Korea Mutual Defense Treaty, which would leave the South vulnerable to a second invasion by the North.
“Under this scenario, even by dismantling them, Pyongyang’s nukes would have achieved their purpose. In short, a U.S.-North Korea peace treaty would be the disaster of all disasters,” he said.
Prior to its fourth nuclear test in January 2016, North Korea proposed a peace treaty but the U.S. rejected it at that time claiming it did not address denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula.
Tara O, adjunct fellow at the Pacific Forum CSIS, doesn’t expect Kim Jong-un to accept any peace treaty with South Korea.
“That doesn’t fit Pyongyang’s strategy of marginalizing South Korea as a non-actor because Kim wants to claim legitimacy over the entire Korean Peninsula, and driving away U.S. forces from South Korea to dispense with what worked so well to deter North Korea for decades,” she said.
Analysts said the idea of concluding a peace treaty first, as a way to coax the North to denuclearize, has been around for a long time but this proposition is based on illogical and incorrect assumptions.
“First and foremost, it is precisely because the North has rejected all of Moon’s gestures toward peace and cooperation,” said Balbina Hwang, visiting professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies.
“North Korea’s desire is and always has been to sideline South Korea, and strike an exclusive bilateral agreement with the U.S., excluding the South and even China.”
She stressed that any peace arrangement on the Korean Peninsula must include the equal input of South Korea.
“I would argue, even more, it must be done under the leadership of South Korea itself, not the U.S. or any other country, such as China,” she said.
“The U.S. should play a supporting role, as a longtime ally of the South, and China should certainly not have a leadership or main role. If the North truly wants peace, then it must demonstrate this sincerity by cooperating and furthering peace with South Korea, at a minimum.”