SKorean leader credits Trump for talks
SEOUL, South Korea — President Moon Jae-in of South Korea warned Wednesday that North Korea will face stiffer sanctions if it resumes weapons tests, while crediting President Donald Trump with helping force the North to resume dialogue and strike a broader agreement to improve Korean ties.
“I am giving a lot of credit to President Trump,” Moon said at a nationally televised news conference a day after the two Koreas forged their agreement during border talks. “I am expressing my gratitude.”
The White House said Trump and Moon had spoken and “underscored the importance of continuing the maximum pressure campaign against North Korea,” adding that Trump “expressed his openness to holding talks between the United States and North Korea at the appropriate time, under the right circumstances.”
Moon’s comments and his conversation with Trump suggested a tactful maneuver by the South Korean leader to stroke the ego of Trump, who has claimed credit for the inter-Korean dialogue, while easing fears in Washington and among Moon’s conservative critics at home that in his eagerness for dialogue, he may be too accommodating to North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un.
Trump tweeted last week that North Korea had gone to the negotiating table because he had been “firm, strong and willing to commit our total ‘might’ against the North.” Moon agreed Wednesday that Kim’s decision to start a dialogue with the South could be a sign that the Trump administration’s policy of applying maximum sanctions and pressure is working.
And he said South Korea and its allies must seize on the North’s renewed appetite for negotiations to persuade it to join broader talks involving the United States over how to end its rapidly advancing nuclear weapons program — an approach the North’s chief delegate to the border talks angrily rejected Tuesday.
Moon said there is a limit to how far the two Koreas can go in improving ties if North Korea does not move toward dismantling its nuclear weapons program.
But Moon, a vocal critic of Washington’s threat to use military force to resolve the North’s nuclear threat, reiterated that the ultimate goal of sanctions and pressure must be to force North Korea to negotiate. He emphasized that his top national security and foreign policy goal is to prevent war on the Korean Peninsula.
Kim surprised many when he deftly seized on the Winter Olympics on Tuesday to turn toward diplomacy with Seoul, playing the part of the statesman even while seeking fractures in the seven-decade alliance between South Korea and the United States.
Kim agreed to send a small team to compete in the Olympics next month when the Winter Games open in the South Korean town of Pyeongchang. That was followed by an announcement about resumption of military-to-military talks between the two countries — without the United States.
Few in Seoul or Washington believe Kim, though an avid sports fan, is motivated solely by the Olympic spirit. The Winter Games also present him with an ideal opportunity to throw a wrench in Trump’s threats of military action if the North does not agree to give up its nuclear program.
Along the way, Kim is looking to get some relief from sanctions that are beginning to bite, and to bring China back to its traditional position — that no one should disturb the status quo, even if that means tolerating a North Korea armed with nuclear weapons.
“This was a very smart move and underscores how we are in a long-standing habit of underestimating the North,” said Nicholas Eberstadt, a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute who has spent decades studying North Korea. “If they can punch a hole through the maximumpressure coalition and it starts to leak, it gives them more room and more time to achieve their objective, which is all about the nuclear program.”
It is a strategy meant to resonate with many South Korean progressives who argue that defusing tensions on the peninsula has to be Seoul’s top priority.
What Kim is not discussing with the South is the future of his nuclear weapons and missile programs. Many experts fear that is exactly the point: Relief from tightening sanctions or threat of American attack may give his engineers time to perfect a warhead able to hit the continental United States.
The Games end in late February. In Washington, it is widely believed that no military action will happen until afterward, in the event that diplomatic routes fail.
The Pentagon has drawn up extensive plans, including a punch-in-the-nose strategy against the North that would involve taking out a missile, and a much-broader attack on the missile and nuclear sites. But both Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have argued internally that it would be nearly impossible to contain any retaliation, officials have said.