Canceling Singapore meeting may not be as bad as it looks

A mural depicting North Korean leader Kim Jong-un looms over a passerby near the Koreatown neighborhood in Los Angeles, Thursday. Earlier in the day, U.S. President Donald Trump canceled a planned summit with Kim Jong-un. / EPA

By Oh Young-jin

Just hours before U.S. President Donald Trump canceled the summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, I was thinking of writing a column about that very possibility.

A colleague told me that only a writer with the “bold mind of yours” would try to write as such. Of course, it did not sound complimentary.

I am not trying to boast of my prescience, because much more often than not I have been proven to lack the ability to look ahead and make the right forecast.

But I have found a couple of interesting things in the behavior of Trump and Kim Jong-un's North Korea that tell us that we do not need to lose sleep over a recent chain of events and things will work out soon.

First and foremost is Trump's letter in which he told the world that the Singapore meeting was off.

Trump did not tweet this time, departing from his usual way of letting the world know what he is up to.

This means he took extra care to treat the North Korean leader with respect.

He also wrote a letter that bears his signature, a gesture of formality.

It was dated May 24, which could mean the letter was revealed to the public even before Kim himself read it. The report of the cancelation letter started just before 11 p.m. Seoul time, the same time as the North. That would be early morning in Washington.

At least it is safe to say that Kim did not have the original hard copy of the letter in his hand when he heard of the news.

The letter addressed Kim as His Excellency, quite a promotion from the little rocket man label Trump used to describe the North Korean leader in an earlier tweet.

What do these things tell us? It is about Trump theatrics ― making his cancelation letter look like a very polite rain check on their June 12 meeting, instead asking Kim to pick a couple of dates he would be available for their summit.

As a matter of fact, in the letter, Trump said “call or write.”

The North also responded in a controlled but conciliatory manner.

Hours later, Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan said the North was willing to have dialogue with the U.S. anytime and in any format.

Kim had previously threatened to cancel the summit after U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton talked about applying the unconditional surrender a la Libya's Gaddafi in dismantling the North's nuclear program and taking the North's nuclear hardware to the U.S. mainland as if it were war trophy.

New Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sounded disparaging when offering to enable North Koreans to eat meat if Pyongyang opted to denuclearize. Then vice foreign minister Choe Sun-hui, called U.S. Vice President Mike Pence a “political dummy” for his hard-line approach.

Trump chose to lump the two together and cited their “tremendous anger and open hostility” as the reason to can the summit.

Kim agreed with Trump and said there was animosity between the two, so dialogue was necessary to resolve it, but he said the North would not be on its hands and knees to beg for a meeting with Trump. Oddly, if we put Trump in the North's position, he might sound just like Kim.

Taking all in all of this, the latest round of tit for tat between Washington and Pyongyang falls short of a battle cry but is more likely part of an extended effort to jockey for a better position in what proves to be a long, twisted road toward a lasting peace.

As we sit and watch the match from ringside, the U.S. under Trump and the North under the young Kim fight as if they were experienced professional wrestlers who create sound and fury without hurting each other.

We hope the players will end their match without hurting each other. But there is always a risk, as is in the ongoing nuclear confrontation.

By the way, to get unstuck from the current situation and move on, it requires no less than Kim Jong-un's involvement. A couple of days from now, Kim may release a letter of his own thanking Trump for his “thoughtful” suggestions and invite him to Pyongyang for talks. Or he may tweet for a change.