Imagery and Reality of South-North Korea Talks

  Imagery and Reality of South-North Korea Talks

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

April 25, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

The summit of the two Koreas’ leaders, which the whole world is watching, is scheduled to be held at the “Peace House” in Panmunjom on the 27^th. This is the third leaders’ talks following the ones in 2000 and 2007. Before the talks, the two Koreas formally inaugurated a leader’s hotline, and North Korea, on its own initiative, announced that it would stop test-firing missiles and close down nuclear testing grounds, creating more room of imagination for this summit.

For every summit between the two Koreas, a political manifesto was signed. For these talks, furthermore, a "declaration on the end of the war between the two Koreas" would be issued, turning the "armistice agreement" signed by the two sides in 1953 into a "peace agreement" in order to end the state of war between the two Koreas which has never been formally proclaimed.

The top-level dialogue between the two Koreas this time has still not shaken off the "shadow" of big power influences. The United States wants to utilize these talks to explore the veracity of North Korea’s will to abandon nuclear weaponry, and to effectively reduce the tensions on the Korean Peninsula, so that it could cope with the military rise of Mainland China with all efforts. The Mainland, however, wants to utilize the talks to renew or recover the role and influence it was gradually losing on the Korean Peninsula, and to bring North Korea back to the China-Russia strategic axis. If the US and China do not restrain their ambitions in big power wrangling, it would make the goal of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula hard to reach.

This summit between the two Koreas is, on the one hand, the continuation of the "Xi-Kim meeting" in March, but also the opening act for the "Trump-Kim meeting" in May. Under the catalysis of Korean nationalism, Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un would inevitably exhaust efforts in playing their roles to nurture the image that both sides will seek peace. However, whether North Korea would truly abandon nuclear weaponry, and whether Trump would foot the bill, are still great variables.

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