Bolton's memoir shows Trump is only hope for North Korea and 'Moonshine' policy

A copy of the book, "The Room Where It Happened," by former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton, is seen at the White House in Washington DC on June 18. The 500-plus page memoir was released in South Korea last week. AP

By Jung Min-ho

Top U.S. officials in current and past administrations have maintained that "the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization" is an essential precondition for any negotiations with North Korea. A new book by former National Security Advisor John Bolton suggests that President Donald Trump has been the only one open to other possibilities.

In his memoir, "The Room Where It Happened," Bolton criticized Trump's way of dealing with North Korea, which, in his view, was "naive" and "dangerous." Trump, the book clearly shows, truly believed it would be possible to rid North Korea of its nuclear arms through diplomatic means and was ready to make concessions he deemed necessary ― if he was not stopped by his key aides.

One of many such moments came during Trump's meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Hanoi on Feb. 28, 2019. In exchange for sanctions relief, North Korean officials offered to dismantle their Yongbyon nuclear facilities, while their U.S. counterparts were not interested in anything other than complete denuclearization.

But then, "Trump asked again if Kim could add something to his offer, such as asking only for a percentage reduction in the sanctions rather than completely removing them. This was beyond doubt the worst moment of the meeting," Bolton writes. "If Kim Jong-un had said yes there, they might have had a deal, disastrously for America. Fortunately, he wasn't biting, saying he was getting nothing, omitting any mention of the sanctions being lifted."

For Trump's foreign policy aides, the summit, which ended without much substance, was a great relief. But it was disappointing news for the South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who was promoting peaceful engagement and rapprochement, known as the "Moonshine" policy (Moon's version of the "Sunshine" policy).

A few days after the summit, Bolton says he had a phone conversation with Chung Eui-yong, his South Korean counterpart, who reflected on Moon's "schizophrenic" idea that North Korea's willingness to dismantle Yongbyon was a "very meaningful first step" that would lead it to an "irreversible stage of denuclearization." "This last contention was nonsense," he writes.

Bolton does not hide his deeply skeptical view of Moon's peaceful unification goal. He accuses the South Korean left of "worshipping" the "Sunshine" policy, which he thinks "subsidized the North's dictatorship."

"To many people, it was the U.S. presence that allowed the South Korean political left to engage in the fantasy of the Sunshine Policy to begin with," he writes. "If we ever left Korea, they would be effectively on their own and would feel the consequences of their foolishness, which I believed they themselves feared."

In this file photo taken on May 13, 2019, U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton listens while President Donald Trump speaks to the press. AFP

Bolton's solution? A military attack against North Korea

Before joining the Trump administration on April 9, 2018, Bolton, who served in government as a political appointee in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, advised Trump not to seek diplomatic solutions with North Korea. Back then, he suggested a military attack was an option to consider.

"I explained why and how a preemptive strike against North Korea's nuclear and ballistic-missile programs would work; how we could use massive conventional bombs against Pyongyang's artillery north of the DMZ, which threatened Seoul, thereby reducing casualties dramatically; and why the United States was rapidly approaching a binary choice, assuming China didn't act dramatically, of either leaving the North with nuclear weapons or using military force," Bolton writes.

"The only other alternatives were seeking reunification of the Peninsula under South Korea or regime change in the North."

Bolton was opposed to the idea of hosting a Trump-Kim meeting in the first place and tried fiercely inside the White House to foil Trump's diplomatic efforts with North Korea at every given opportunity.

After his first summit with Kim in Singapore on June, 2018, Trump received a letter from Kim on Sept. 10 and wanted another meeting, which frustrated Bolton.

Bolton told Trump the letter was written by "the dictator of a rat-shit little country" and Kim "doesn't deserve another meeting with you."

Had Trump taken Bolton's advice more seriously, there could have been a preemptive attack against North Korea, which some experts warn would have resulted in an all-out war.

Neither Trump nor Kim want any more South Korea-U.S. military drills

Bolton says Trump has long held the view that host countries of U.S. troops, including South Korea, should pay more for "their" defense costs and that expensive military exercises with them should be minimized.

This, Bolton reckons, would be welcomed by North Korea, which has seen South Korea-U.S. military exercises as a grave threat to its existence. As South Korea is reluctant to accept the Trump administration's demand to pay "significantly more," their joint drills are in jeopardy.

Bolton writes he "feared Trump's ultimate threat ― withdrawing our troops from any country not paying what he deemed to be an adequate amount ― was real in South Korea's case."

According to the book, Trump told Moon during their summit in Seoul in June, 2019, that the United States "shouldn't pay real estate taxes for land to protect the South since we didn't own the land, and perhaps we would leave when things were peaceful."