Moon, the powerful peacemaker
Moon offers to meet Kim anytime without formalities
By Kim Rahn
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President Moon Jae-in
U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may be the main characters of the nuclear standoff drama that has been unfolding with a series of reversals and twists. But without backup and setting by President Moon Jae-in, the whole play may have not been on stage at all.
He has again shone as a “mediator” because he reignited the dying embers of the Washington-Pyongyang summit, which was on the verge of falling through following Trump's decision to call it off.
Since the beginning of this year, Moon encouraged the North and the U.S. to engage in denuclearization talks by taking advantage of the rare reconciliatory mood created by the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. Kim offered a summit with Trump, who immediately accepted it, and they agreed to hold it in Singapore on June 12.
But the preparation faltered as the North threatened to reconsider the summit in protest of hawkish U.S. officials' suggestion of a “Libyan model” of denuclearization, and stood up a U.S. advance team sent to prepare for the summit.
Then Trump said he would cancel the summit. Perplexed, Pyongyang issued a statement to express its intention to continue dialogue, and Kim asked Moon to meet.
In the urgent, secret meeting at Panmunjeom, Saturday, Moon told Kim about Trump's pledge to guarantee his regime security, which Moon heard from the U.S. president in their May 22 bilateral talks. Kim also reaffirmed his commitment to denuclearization and the summit with Trump.
By disclosing this in a press conference, Sunday, Moon again made Kim's determination public, which served as Kim's indirect response to Trump's cancellation message.
Around the second Moon-Kim meeting, Washington began to send positive signs of the Trump-Kim summit again. The State Department and Trump officially confirmed Monday that working-level talks between the U.S. and North Korea were ongoing in Panmunjeom.
Moon said such inter-Korean summits without formalities can take place anytime again. “It is important to have regular, formal summits like the one in April and the one scheduled in Pyongyang in fall,” Moon said Monday in a meeting with secretaries. “But if we can meet at any time when there is urgent need, either on the southern side or the northern side, like the latest one, that will accelerate improvement in inter-Korean relations.”
For such possible meetings in the future, he ordered the aides to prepare necessary measures to prevent a vacuum in the right to exercise supreme command, have the National Security Council stand by, and notify relevant countries before and after the meetings.
International experts and media have highly recognized Moon's role, saying he put the summit back on track.
Beatrice Fihn, executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, criticized both Trump and Kim for playing with people's lives with threats of using nuclear weapons, while praising Moon's role.
“Men with fragile egos should not have the world's faith placed in them to solve these existential crises,” she said in a contribution to CNN.
Fihn said Moon's solution to prevent possible war on the Korean Peninsula was “careful diplomacy with the North on one hand, and gentle ego stroking of Trump on the other hand.”
“By playing to the man's ego, Moon convinced Trump to try statesman-like diplomacy and brought North Korea on board with denuclearization,” she said.
Robert Reich, a former U.S. cabinet member, also said if a lasting peace is established on the peninsula, Moon, not Trump, will deserve the Nobel Peace Prize. “At this fragile point in time, when Trump and Kim ― two hot-headed paranoids ― could start a nuclear war, the world is fortunate to have Moon at the helm in South Korea,” he wrote in a Facebook post.