03-09-2018, 11:52 PM
https://www.vox.com/world/2018/3/9/17100...eting-moon
President Donald Trump’s decision to agree to a historic face-to-face meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un can be traced back to the savvy politicking of another leader entirely: South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
Moon, who has been in office just 10 months, played a pivotal role in setting up the potential summit. That’s a particularly impressive accomplishment for Moon given that he and Trump have at times clashed sharply about how aggressively to confront North Korea. Tensions got so bad that in September, Trump accused Moon of “appeasement.”
Trump is taking a very different line now, expressing an openness to talks with Kim that would have seemed unimaginable when the president threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea during a United Nations address in September.
Experts say the shift reflects the success of Moon’s persistent push for “anytime, anywhere” diplomacy with Pyongyang. The South Korean leader’s efforts got a major boost during the runup to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, when he and Kim got into high-level talks over North Korea’s participation in the games. Moon used the momentum from those talks to set the stage for an unprecedented US-North Korean summit.
“South Korea deserves the vast bulk of the credit for this summit offer,” Mintaro Oba, a former State Department official who worked on North Korea policy, told me. “This wouldn’t have happened without President Moon’s initiative and deftness in balancing engagement with North Korea and close coordination with the United States.”
Moon’s orchestration of this meeting has, at least for now, significantly diminished the chance of violent conflict breaking out between North Korea and the US and steered the relationship toward the kind of open-minded diplomacy that he has called for for decades.
He’s also managed to break the pattern of what some South Koreans call “Korea passing” — the way the big regional players like China, Japan, and the US at times exclude or sideline South Korea in talks about North Korea policy. Moon has managed to charm Trump after a period of stormy relations, and has ensured that South Korea is now playing an indispensable role in talks over denuclearizing North Korea.
But it’s also a risky gambit. Moon can bring the US and North Korea to the table, but he can’t force them into a deal. And if the negotiations fail, Kim and Trump might, in a worst-case scenario, decide that military force is the only option left.