Unprecedented visuals were seen across the world on 27 April. Kim Jong Un walked across the Demilitarised Zone for a summit meeting with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in, becoming the first ever North Korean leader to set foot on the Southern soil. They shook hands warmly, and later in the day, even embraced each other.
Just four months ago, the doomsday clock was ticking furiously in the Korean Peninsula and the danger of conflict was mounting by the day.
President Trump was speaking of the possibility of a ‘major, major conflict’, imposing a series of debilitating sanctions on North Korea, while the Kim Jong Un regime was testing one deadlier missile after another, and claiming to have detonated its most powerful nuclear device.
And then suddenly on 1 January, a cool breeze of reason and détente began to be felt.
Kim Jong Un offered a peace dialogue with South Korea and participation in Pyeongchang winter Olympics. Officials of both sides started to meet, sportswomen began training together to play as a joint ice hockey team, and Kim Jo-yong (KJU’s younger sister) traveled to South Korea (SK) with a personal letter from KJU to President Moon.
Within weeks it was announced that not only Kim and Moon will be meeting (for the third ever Summit in 70 years between the divided nations) but also, there would be a first-ever direct meeting between the US President and KJU, in late May or early June.
Sounds surreal or dreamlike?
One can be forgiven for thinking so or being skeptical. But the fact remains that the Korean theater never fails to surprise.
When North Korea Became A World Threat Whilst Its Adversary Prospered
Since the end of inter-Korean war, the adversaries have gone their separate ways. South Korea pursued economic development under the security of the US umbrella. Its GDP today is forty times bigger than that of North Korea.
Pyongyang, feeling vulnerable and threatened by the US and its allies, went about beefing up its security and developing WMD as insurance against regime change.
To generate badly needed foreign exchange, it unhesitatingly also turned a proliferator with sly support of a few nations, especially Pakistan and China. Pakistan and North Korea exchanged designs of uranium enrichment and missile fabrication.
In the process, North Korean people were impoverished and brutalised.
The country became an international pariah and a threat to peace and security in East Asia and beyond.
Last November, it managed to test-fire the dreaded ICBM Hwasong-15 (13,000 km range on a standard trajectory), having the capacity to target the US mainland.
As far as the US was concerned, a red-line had been crossed and all options including military, had to be brought into play. That is precisely what Seoul feared the most as being a front-line state, it would be the one to bear the brunt of conflict. Tens of thousands of South Koreans could perish within the first hour of hostilities breaking out. Seoul is located merely 56 km from the DMZ.
During the preceding decades, several efforts have been made by the protagonists to hammer out a modus-vivendi. North Korea has promised to dismantle its WMD programme and South Korea, USA, Japan have offered economic assistance. For a variety of reasons, primarily trust deficit, nothing fructified.
China, loathe to see North Korea coming under western influence, has always played both sides. Russia and Japan (members to the Six-Party talks) in any case, are marginal players in this great-game.
India – The Sole Non-Aligned Benign Player in Korean Peninsula
India, respected in both Koreas as a non-aligned benign power and a nation that had sent a medical mission to Korean Peninsula during the inter-Korean war, has stayed out of the theater. Certain scholars have been suggesting that India’s good offices could be used to foster a thaw in Korean Peninsula.
Truth be told, the US and China are the only two powers that can make a difference in Korean Peninsula, using both carrot and stick. India has neither. She lacks leverage with the Koreas.
North Korea’s WMD proliferation has in fact ,adversely affected India’s security. We now have nominal ties with Pyongyang and a strategic partnership with Seoul.
What Kim Jong Un’s Olive Branch Offer Entails
So why did Kim Jong Un suddenly decide to smoke the peace pipe? He felt that he had developed the necessary WMD arsenal to deter a US led assault.
The sanctions had begun to bite. North Korea was never as isolated. Even China was getting frustrated.
It was thus time to switch gears and seize the initiative. Kim Jong Un has demonstrated that he is astute beyond his years and an accomplished poker player, like his father and grandfather.
Though he has offered to denuclearise, he is also seeking security guarantees. He trusts nobody except his WMD.
He has drawn the necessary lessons from the fate of Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein.
Trump’s efforts to tear-up the Iran deal has reinforced his conviction of the transactional disposition of the Americans. He knows that the likes of John Bolton and Mike Pompeo are committed to regime change in North Korea.
Thus, his game plan with the US would be to settle for some variant of a ‘freeze-for-freeze.’
North Korea to freeze its WMD programme (under IAEA safeguards) and the US, South Korea to freeze joint military exercises, possibly reduce US troop presence in South Korea, as well as offer massive economic assistance while rolling back sanctions. The world can be assured of riveting political theater and gruelling negotiations.
(The writer is a former High Commissioner to Canada, Ambassador to South Korea and Official Spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs. He can be reached at @AmbVPrakash)
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