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| In this combination of images are North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, left, and U.S. President Donald Trump during their meeting, Feb. 28, 2019, in Hanoi, Vietnam. AP-Yonhap |
By Kim Yoo-chul
South Korea lost the most from the collapse of last week's second summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, experts said Sunday.
They said the U.S. may demand progress on the North's human rights issues as a prerequisite for the removal of sanctions.
"Multiple stalled inter-Korean projects require sanctions exemptions. Without progress on North Korea, President Moon Jae-in's top domestic agenda becomes his only success metric for voters, who have already criticized his administration for failing to deliver on economic metrics such as unemployment," Alison Evans, deputy head of Asia Pacific Country Risk at IHS Market, said in an email.
The main sticking point that prevented the U.S. and North Korea from coming to an agreement was most likely the sequencing and extent of "denuclearization" and sanctions relief.
"North Korea remains unlikely to reduce programs that are less visible and less publicly well-understood, such as sites other than the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, which produces uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons, and the Transporter-Erector Launchers used to launch missiles," the senior analyst said.
He said the Hanoi summit ending without an agreement increases the risk of North Korea-United States diplomacy breaking down.
"The summit highlights the United States' all-or-nothing position, which undermines possible progress toward concrete steps this year, according to the analyst.
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| North Korean leader Kim Jong-un waves before boarding his train at the Dong Dang Railway Station, March 2. AFP-Yonhap |
Sean King, a former U.S. diplomat and a senior vice president at Park Strategies in New York, responded; "Trump looked sober, serious and disappointed and in a very different mood from Singapore."
"Trump's right to walk away. Glad he didn't go for a deal at any cost. Japan's Abe must be relieved and South Korea sounds crushed. Trump's right that Kim calls his own shots. I too believe that," King said.
"Declaring peace, without achieving more concrete steps toward denuclearization first, risks accepting North Korea as a de facto nuclear state," Leif-Eric Easley, an associate professor of International Studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said.
"While North Korea's suspension of nuclear and missile tests may resemble stability, the freeze is easily reversible and likely temporary. The regime continues to produce fissile material, and advance its missile and nuclear technologies," the professor added.
On a related note, the negotiating impasse comes at a difficult time for Trump, politically, as his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, said in congressional testimony that the president had committed criminal acts during the 2016 presidential campaign.
"While congressional Democrats will almost certainly utilize the talks' failure to undermine Trump's assertions of his superior negotiating skills, the fact that over a year remains before the November 2020 presidential election means that this episode will carry only minor importance by the time voters cast their ballots," said Evans.
Recently, the United States granted sanctions exemptions, temporarily, to go ahead with a joint rail survey project to link the two Koreas.
"But actual infrastructure connections would require significant material improvements which, like restarting the Gaesong industrial park, a now shuttered joint economic project of both Koreas, are not possible under current sanctions," the professor said.
Efforts by previous administrations in these areas were derailed because the Kim regime did not trust foreign traffic on the country's infrastructure, and aggressively walled off the joint industrial complex from the North Korean economy.
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