On 27 April, the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will cross the Demarcation Line on the Korean Peninsula, a living testimony to the Korean War (1950-1953), to meet South Korean President Moon Jae-in, in a summit that would be a precursor for an unprecedented face-to-face between Kim and US President Donald Trump, either end of May or early June. The North-South summit will be the third of its kind. Kim's father, Kim Jong-il, had met twice, in 2000 and 2007, with his South Korean counterparts at the time. The North Korean-American summit will be history in the making. As a matter of fact, what we have been witnessing on the Korean Peninsula ever since the Olympic Games in South Korea last February is historic. The world could be watching the beginning of the official end of the Korean War between North Korea, on the one hand, and the United States and South Korea on the other. The Armistice Agreement of 1953 was signed between the North and the United States government. Three consequential developments have taken the world by surprise in April 2018. The first was the secret visit that CIA Director Mike Pompeo made to Pyongyang, to meet with Kim during the Easter weekend to lay the groundwork for the Kim-Trump summit. During his confirmation hearings 10 days ago, as nominee for US secretary of state, before the Senate House Foreign Relations Committee, Pompeo said he is “optimistic that the United States government can set the conditions for [a successful summit] appropriately, so that the president [Trump] and the North Korean leader can have that conversation [that] will set us down the course of achieving a diplomatic outcome that… America and the world so desperately need.” Presumably, the CIA director was referring to the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula. On 17 April, President Trump tweeted that he has given his “blessing” to the idea of bringing a formal end to the Korean War, if it would come up in the third North-South Summit, on 27 April. The US president said that there is a “great chance to solve a world problem. This is not a problem for the United States. This is not a problem for Japan or any other country. This is a problem for the world.” The second consequential development was the statement by the South Korean president, 19 April, that the North has “expressed its intention for complete denuclearisation”. Moreover, North Korea is not making demands that the US cannot accept, such as the withdrawal of American troops in the South. If true (and there is nothing, so far, that proves the contrary), this position is a first of its kind on the part of North Korea since 1953. Whether it is a tactical repositioning or a radical strategic shift remains to be seen. Be this as it may, one thing is sure: such a position should be considered one of the results of the Kim-Pompeo meeting in Pyongyang earlier this month. It also serves President Trump well before the hawkish elements in the American establishment who have doubted the sincerity of the North Korean regime in calling for this summit. It is worth noting that a direct hot line was installed between Kim Jong-un and Moo Jae-in last Friday, for the first time since the Armistice. The two were supposed to talk to each other before their scheduled summit.
The third consequential development took place before a meeting of the Central Committee of the ruling party in North Korea, the Workers' Party, on Friday, 20 April. Kim addressed the meeting and announced that Pyongyang will suspend nuclear and missile tests effective Saturday, 21 April. Not only that, but North Korea will shut down the site where it had previously conducted nuclear tests.
I would argue that this surprise move by the North is also a result of an understanding between Pyongyang and Washington that came out of the meeting that Pompeo held with the North Korean leader. And it shows how desperate both sides are in their need to make the summit a success for domestic reasons. From an American strategic perspective, it should be read in a larger repositioning of the United States both in North East Asia and in the Asian-Pacific rim. Kim told the Central Committee that North Korea had made rapid progress developing what he called a “super large warhead” and missile capability of carrying it to the United States mainland. Last September, the North had tested this super bomb, its sixth testing of a nuclear bomb, and was large enough to the extent that Mount Mantap, the 7,200-foot-high peak under which the North has detonated its six nuclear bombs in the northeast of North Korea, shifted. This shift was the equivalent of a 6.3 magnitude earthquake. This area is not known for natural seismic activities. In the middle of 2017, the North fired an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that it said put the entire US mainland within its reach, adding that it could carry a “super large heavy warhead”. With this test, the North Korean government declared that its “rocket development process has been completed”. These advances paved the way for the strategic shifts in positions that the world has been following, mesmerised, on the Korean Peninsula since last February. Certainly, the sum of these shifts, be it on the side of the North and South Koreans, or on the part of the Americans, speaks volumes about the fair probability of a new strategic realignment in North East Asia and in the Asia-Pacific rim that would involve the powers that had been members to the now defunct Six-Nation Talks; namely, North and South Korea, Japan, China, Russia and the United States.
A new chapter opens in this sensitive part of the world, with opportunities and challenges. However, the end result is not assured yet. The writer is former assistant foreign minister.
