Moon's peace initiative faces more deadlock

President Moon Jae-in speaks during a Cabinet meeting at Cheong Wa Dae, Tuesday. Yonhap

Biden has no intention to meet with Kim Jon-un

By Kang Seung-woo

President Moon Jae-in's stalled Korean Peninsula peace process, seeking engagement between South and North Korea and the United States, appears to be doomed, according to diplomatic observers, as the two other partners have been dashing his last flickers of hope with their continuing tug-of-war over the North's denuclearization.

On Monday (local time), White House press secretary Jen Psaki said U.S. President Joe Biden does not intend to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, adding that his approach to Pyongyang will be "quite different" from that of his predecessor, former President Donald Trump who met Kim three times.

Her remarks reaffirmed the new U.S. president's pursuit of an approach different from that of Trump, who had sought progress in North Korean denuclearization through direct leader-to-leader engagement that Moon was also supportive of.

Hours later, Kim Yo-jong, the North Korean leader's sister, made a harsh criticism of Moon, mocking him as a "parrot" that repeats Washington's "gangster-like logic."

This comes in response to President Moon who said, Friday, that the North's launch of two ballistic missiles the previous day was undesirable and could undercut the mood for dialogue, even though South Korea also test-fires missiles.

"He cannot feel sorry for being praised as a parrot raised by America," she said. "This could be what is described as self-contradictory and being caught in one's own trap."

Remarks from both the U.S. and North Korea are dealing a hard blow to the South Korean President's efforts to revive the inter-Korean detente in 2018, highlighted by summitry and sweet talk between the three countries.

"They mean that both the U.S. and North Korea will not lose the upper hand over each other in the nuclear standoff, but the bigger problem is that South Korea cannot leverage them to the negotiating table," said Shin Beom-chul, director of the Center for Diplomacy and Security at the Korea Research Institute for National Strategy.

"On such a fragile base of the peace process, South Korea's influence over them will wane and eventually the initiative will inevitably fall apart."

Following the collapse of Trump and Kim's Hanoi summit in February 2019, optimism for the peace process evaporated quickly, with no inter-Korean exchanges or cooperation taking place since then, as the North was upset that Moon misled Kim to believe that dismantling the Yongbyon nuclear complex would lead to sanctions relief.

"After the Hanoi failure, we should have rethought the peace initiative based on the situation at the time. Despite North Korea's harsh criticism of the South Korean government, we have been ignoring it and waiting for inter-Korean dialogue, with Seoul losing the initiative to the North in the end," Shin said.

"Given the situation, the Biden administration, skeptical of the Moon administration's dealing with North Korea, is seeking to handle the North with its own diplomatic approach based on diplomacy and human rights rather than listening to the South Korean government, which leads to the allies remaining split over North Korean issues."

Park Won-gon, a professor of North Korean studies at Ewha Womans University, also said the peace initiative is at a critical juncture, but the North's fiery rhetoric seems to be a last-ditch tug-of-war with the U.S., which is in the final stage of its policy review of the totalitarian state.

"In the wake of North Korea's belligerent rhetoric and series of missile launches, whispers are growing in Washington, D.C., that the U.S. should have more talks with the North, although Biden is not expected to accept it," Park said.

He also said the North's recent tension-spiking acts are aimed at pressuring the South Korean government to aggressively convince the U.S. to Pyongyang's advantage.