President Moon Jae-in’s peace proposal to North Korea in Berlin, Germany, indeed sounds hollow, considering the palpable tension on the Korean Peninsula following Pyongyang’s recent test-firing of what it claims to be an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).
It is hard to miss a striking contradiction between Moon’s peace initiative and the joint condemnation he made at the same venue together with U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. So are the decades of efforts to deal with this pariah state that keeps coming back to haunt the world.
Now the world is preoccupied with this isolated state’s latest blackmail but, if the past is any guide, it will pass and a relative lull will ensue. Despite loud alarms, the latest rocket is short of a working ICBM that can deliver a miniaturized nuclear payload through the stress of re-entry through the atmosphere.
Moon’s initiative is the groundwork for that coming window of opportunity and possible peace. The President has now warned that this is the North’s last chance of getting guarantees for its survival.
The proposal comes 17 years after the one that President Kim Dae-jung made in Berlin. Three months later, Kim had the first inter-Korean summit with Kim Jong-il, the current leader’s father.
Moon offered a summit with the young North Korean leader to discuss a peace treaty.
Replacing the present truce with a peace treaty is the North’s stated goal, which Seoul and Washington have previously rejected as a ruse for American military disengagement in South Korea. The South-North summit would address Pyongyang’s insistence on the resolution of Korean problems by Koreans.
Only last week, Moon received strong support from Trump for Korea’s leading role in creating the environment conducive to peace on the peninsula. It came with their agreement to stop the hostile policy against the North. The U.S. would be an important party that would be brought in as guarantor for an inter-Korean peace regime. It would also help ensure the leadership of the North would not suffer the same fate as Muammar Gadhafi, the Libyan dictator who was deposed despite receiving guarantees for his survival from the West in return for his rollback of a nuclear program.
Moon’s proposals also include incremental peace-enhancing elements such as reunions of separated families for the Chuseok Holiday in October, the North’s participation in the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics, cultural exchanges and cessation of hostilities along the border.
Realization of any of these could cool the tension on the peninsula and subsequently would be used to enhance trust between the two Koreas. It would also address the lack of trust that the North’s International Olympic Committee (IOC) member Chang Ung recently cited as grounds for Pyongyang’s rejection of Moon’s invitation to PyeongChang.
The North should not take Moon’s offer as a sign of desperation. But he is putting high stakes on a bid to defuse the current crisis peacefully before it turns into a devastating war. The North would surely bear the brunt of that devastation.