Since his election in 2017, Moon has dedicated himself to mediating between Washington and Pyongyang, tirelessly selling Trump on the merits of negotiating with Kim
If there is anyone keeping his fingers crossed for President Donald Trump and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, to agree on how to denuclearize the North when they meet in Vietnam this month, it is President Moon Jae-in of South Korea.
With no quick fix available for South Korea’s stubborn economic troubles, Moon’s best chance for reversing his falling approval ratings rests on whether he can jump-start his signature policy of helping advance the North’s denuclearization and improving inter-Korean ties.
But that depends on Trump and Kim striking a denuclearization deal when they meet February 27-28 in Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital, that is significant enough for Washington and the United Nations to ease sanctions and create room for Moon to push his ambitious plans for economic cooperation with North Korea.
“But if the second US-North Korea summit fails, there will be more criticism blaming President Moon,” said Koh Yu-hwan, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. “There will be more critics accusing him of having been too optimistic and naïve, misreading North Korea’s intentions and misrepresenting them to the Americans.”
Since his election in 2017, Moon has dedicated himself to mediating between Washington and Pyongyang, tirelessly selling Trump on the merits of negotiating with Kim. In doing so, he has bet so heavily on Trump and Kim reaching a denuclearization deal that his own political fortunes at home have become increasingly tied to the whims of the two unpredictable leaders.
Moon’s approval ratings soared higher than 80 per cent last spring when he met Kim twice on the inter-Korean border to help defuse a possible military confrontation between the United States and North Korea. That set the stage for the historic June summit meeting between Kim and Trump in Singapore.
But Moon’s ratings have since plummeted below 50 per cent amid stalled talks between Washington and Pyongyang over how to carry out the vague promise Trump and Kim made in Singapore to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” and establish a permanent peace between their countries. Moon flew to Pyongyang in September to meet Kim again to break the logjam between Washington and Pyongyang.
But the deadlock remains, prompting Moon’s critics to question whether he has oversold Kim’s willingness to denuclearize.
When he met Moon in September, Kim promised to become the first North Korean leader to visit Seoul. But with his negotiations with Washington stalled, the year ended without Kim visiting as Moon said he would, further raising doubts about Moon’s influence over Kim.
While Moon remained preoccupied with North Korea, domestic affairs turned against him. The popularity of his governing Democratic Party has plunged as its politicians have been tainted by #MeToo accusations and other scandals.
South Koreans in their 20s, a traditional support base for progressives like Moon, have been fast losing faith in his government because of his inability to create more jobs, according to the polling company Realmeter.
Older, more conservative South Koreans have rallied in central Seoul almost every weekend in recent months, criticizing as dangerous Moon’s economic policies and his rapprochement efforts with the North.
But Moon remains convinced that Trump’s strong desire to achieve something none of his predecessors could accomplish — ending the North Korean nuclear crisis — and Kim’s desperate need to improve his country’s economy can create a singular opportunity for both Koreas.
Trump and Kim, he says, can denuclearize the Korean Peninsula and end the tensions there, opening the way for economically integrating the impoverished North, with its cheap labor, and the South, whose slowing economy needs a new source of growth.
“We have never had an opportunity like this since the Korean War ended in an armistice in 1953, and we should not miss it because it will never come again,” Moon said last month.
Longtime North Korea observers saw the current stalemate coming when Trump and Kim ended their Singapore meeting without sorting out key details, especially what is meant by the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
In the past, the North used that term when it argued that it would give up its nuclear weapons only when the United States ceased hostilities, including ending its military presence in South Korea.
Moon says Kim has made a strategic decision to give up his nuclear weapons in a “verifiable and irreversible way” and focus on rebuilding his country’s economy should Washington take corresponding actions, like easing sanctions, to prove that it is no longer hostile.
He also said last month that there was “no difference” between the United States and North Korean definitions of “complete denuclearization,” saying it meant dismantling all North Korean nuclear weapons and fissile materials and their production facilities.
“First, we ought to take him at his word,” Gen. Vincent Brooks, who retired as commander of the U.S. military in South Korea in November, told “PBS NewsHour” last month, referring to Kim. “And that’s not an easy thing to accept, especially given the track record of North Korea. But this is a new leader in North Korea.”
Trump, who in 2017 threatened to unleash “fire and fury” against North Korea and derided Kim as “Little Rocket Man” because of his provocative missile tests, now promises to help rebuild the country’s economy if it denuclearizes.
“North Korea will become a different kind of rocket — an economic one!” he said on Twitter this month.
But last month, Trump’s director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, told Congress that North Korea was “unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production capability because its leaders ultimately view nuclear weapons as critical to regime survival.”
Nevertheless, Washington’s special representative for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, spent three days in Pyongyang this month exchanging “detailed and exhaustive” lists of what the two governments wanted from each other to make denuclearization possible, said Kim Eui-kyeom, Moon’s spokesman, after Biegun briefed South Korean officials on his trip.