'North Korea unlikely to change position on denuclearization'

President Moon Jae-in and first lady Kim Jung-sook are greeted by officials from Finland upon their arrival at the Helsinki-Vantaa Airport on Sunday. Yonhap

Expectation low ahead of G-20 summit

By Lee Min-hyung

It's unlikely the upcoming G20 summit in the Japanese city of Osaka late this month will produce specific results in terms of putting nuclear diplomacy back on track because expectations of a diplomatic breakthrough that would end the nuclear standoff are thin, experts said Monday.

The Osaka meeting will be attended by key regional leaders including Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump, all of whom have sizable stakes in the denuclearization process. At the summit, President Moon Jae-in is widely expected to pitch his ambitious idea of partial sanctions easing on North Korea and encourage the United States, Japan, China and Russia to stand behind this for an early resumption of the denuclearization talks.

Trump, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and President Moon all deserve credit for helping create a moment of "real diplomatic promise," but political observers in Seoul note that the moment of promise has curdled "quite unexpectedly" into possibly a tragic missed chance.

They believe that the summit is unlikely to serve as a venue to significantly change the ongoing deadlock in talks on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, nor open a path to mutual trust between Washington and Pyongyang.

"North Korea remains very firm in its determination not to change its position," Shin Beom-chul, a researcher at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said. "North Korea is showing no signs of shifting its position now, and under the circumstance, Moon's peace efforts will unlikely generate the desired outcome."

The researcher claimed President Moon's self-proclaimed "mediating role" can only be effective if the North adopts a flexible attitude in its approach to dialogue with the United States.

Getting sanctions relief from the United Nations Security Council is the utmost prerequisite for Pyongyang to return to the table for nuclear disarmament talks. But Washington is saying no economic benefits will be provided unless Pyongyang delivers a very detailed and specific commitment toward dismantling its nuclear program.

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Additionally, the North Korean issue will be likely be a secondary one at the summit with participating leaders paying more attention to global economic affairs, such as the deepening trade friction between Washington and Beijing, Shin pointed out.

"It is much more crucial for Moon to come up with survival strategies for the South to deal with the ongoing trade war between them ahead of the G20."

The year-long trade dispute between the world's two economic powerhouses is showing signs of having a negative impact not just on the economies of the related parties, but also that of South Korea.

Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University, expects President Moon will be able to draw a "bond of sympathy" from neighboring countries on the need to denuclearize the peninsula. "But this will not serve as critical momentum to bring the North back to negotiations," the professor said.

"At a planned summit between President Moon and Trump in South Korea, June 30, the two are expected to speak about predictable issues of peace and nuclear disarmament on the peninsula in consideration of the months-long standoff between Washington and Pyongyang," Kim Yeol-soo, director of the security strategy unit at the Korea Institute for Military Affairs, said.

South Korea is going all-out to help the U.S. and the North restart their nuclear dialogue. Senior government officials are contacting their North Korean counterparts for another inter-Korean summit ahead of the forthcoming Moon-Trump summit. Plus, the Ministry of Unification approved the provision of food aid to the impoverished North as a gesture of limited sanctions relief.

Cheong Wa Dae recently said it remains "cautiously optimistic" over the possibility of a fourth meeting between Moon and Kim Jong-un before Trump's upcoming visit to Seoul.

The worsening cross-strait relations between China and Taiwan is seen as an additional factor burdening President Moon's peace effort, as Taiwan's growing hostility toward Beijing is a source of danger to the maintenance of regional peace and stability.

Asan's Shin said the Osaka summit could serve as a venue to resolve other political issues with South Korea's neighboring countries.

"There is ample room for improvement in relations between Seoul and Tokyo during the G20," he said.

A dispute on the forced labor of Koreans during the 1910-45 Japanese colonial rule of the peninsula has been a particularly political hot potato between the two countries.

"Such issues are very tough to resolve at one time, but there will be enough chances for Moon and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to deliver a message outlining their joint commitment to resolve the issue in a peaceful manner during the summit."