May 2, 2018 | The Hill

Seoul’s concessions expose limitations of Inter-Korean summit

On the surface, last week’s inter-Korean summit appeared to be a momentous step towards peace after decades of hostility on the peninsula. However, FDD research associate Mathew Ha argues in The Hill that concessions made by South Korea at the summit expose the South’s weaknesses and embolden the North. Asserting pressure on the Kim regime to denuclearize, end its ballistic missile program, and fix its urgent humanitarian crisis should be top negotiation priorities, particularly ahead of the planned U.S.-North Korea summit.

An excerpt from the op-ed follows:

“Earlier this week, Moon’s office shared in a press release that world leaders, including Pope Francis and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, expressed hope this summit will be conducive to genuine peace on the Korean peninsula. Although this summit saw major progress, with both Koreas pledging to cease hostilities to pursue peace on the Korean peninsula, the Moon administration made concessions to North Korea, which will only encourage hostility since they confirm Pyongyang’s suspicion that it can extort benefits from Seoul without offering concessions of its own.

A notable development from this summit was Moon and Kim’s mutual pledge to end hostilities to pave the way for peace. Reaching this mutual agreement towards should be a reason to celebrate. Yet, the flaw of this approach is that it emphasizes a paper agreement at the expense of denuclearization, which would actually reduce the threat of war. Kim and Moon’s joint statement only provides one point about denuclearization with less substance than the other agenda items of establishing peace and reinvigorating inter-Korean engagement. This pays evidence to Moon’s ruling party advocating that denuclearization should not be the priority of inter-Korean talks, but rather a corollary for the ‘exit stage of negotiations.’”

Read the full piece from The Hill here.

Mathew Ha is a research associate at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, focused on North Korea. Follow him on Twitter @MatJunsuk.

Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD. FDD is a Washington-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.

Issues:

Indo-Pacific North Korea