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Experts advise Moon to adopt 'strategic patience' toward Pyongyang
By Kang Seung-woo
With former Vice President Joe Biden scheduled to be sworn in as the 46th U.S. president this month, his administration is highly expected to go down the road of "Anything but Trump" in his domestic and foreign policies.
However, diplomatic experts advised the upcoming president to honor at least some of what President Donald Trump has done with North Korea over the last four years, and not to move away from his policy toward Pyongyang.
"Many believe that Biden should try to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue based on what has been accomplished by Trump," said Kim Joon-hyung, the chancellor of the Korea National Diplomatic Academy (KNDA).
The chancellor said Trump raised the priority of the North Korean nuclear issue that had been regarded as "critical but not urgent" in the U.S.' foreign policy and lowered the bar for a summit with the North, making it no longer a historic event. He also praised Trump for adopting an ideal approach in dealing with the reclusive country ― top-down diplomacy ― given that only North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has the authority to negotiate about denuclearization issues.
"Thanks to such contributions, the North and the U.S. could agree to the Singapore Joint Statement ― and the North has not conducted any long-range missile or nuclear tests since Trump and Kim first met in June 2018, which is admirable for Trump. Given what Trump has done over the last four years, Biden needs to honor the joint statement, which would serve as a good signal to the North," he added.
Harry Kazianis, a senior director of Korean Studies at the Center for the National Interest, echoed the KNDA chief's view, saying, "The new administration should simply build on what Trump has done. In fact, Biden could signal that right now to North Korea in a simple statement or quote that he will not tear down what can only be described as a peaceful coexistence created by Trump between Washington and Pyongyang."
In that sense, Joseph DeTrani, a former U.S. special envoy to the six-party talks, recommended that the Biden administration embrace and build on the Singapore Declaration that many believe would be the first step toward opening the door to negotiations.
"The declaration succinctly articulates the need to transform bilateral relations, end the Korean War and pursue the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, in addition to repatriation of the troops killed during the Korean War. Those are the core objectives to what we pursued in 26 years of negotiations with North Korea," he said.
Despite the progress in bilateral ties, nuclear negotiations have been deadlocked since the Hanoi summit ended without a deal in February 2019, as the Trump administration clung to the hope that the North would agree to full denuclearization before getting anything in return, while the Kim regime wants Washington to take a step-by-step approach.
The experts concurred that the Biden team needs to take an incremental approach to resolve the denuclearization issues.
"To the Kim Jong-un regime, its nuclear weapons are more like regime survival. In that respect, it is hard to expect the North to agree to dismantle its nuclear program in a short period of time, so we are required to pursue North Korean denuclearization over the long haul, incrementally," said Cheong Seong-chang, a fellow at the Wilson Center's Asia Program.
Gallucci also said, "No one should expect this to happen very quickly for both technical and political reasons. Steps by the U.S. and the North to reduce tension and increase their investment in the process of normalization will be necessary, and quite likely will have to be linked together in some kind of reciprocal process," he added.
In terms of whether to ease sanctions to bring the North back to the negotiating table, they were mixed on the issue.
"Neither the U.S. nor the rest of the international community should have any enthusiasm for sanctions," Gallucci said.
"They may at times be necessary, but they represent the failure to achieve desired outcomes by negotiations. I think the new administration could show some flexibility in the application of sanctions without showing weakness."
However, Shin Kak-soo, a former vice foreign minister, said sanctions are the leverage that will move North Korea toward denuclearization, adding, "So lifting them should be in lockstep with progress in the denuclearization process."
"The North returning to negotiations shouldn't be conditioned on easing sanctions or providing any other deliverable. If during negotiations sanctions are eased, fine, but as a result of negotiations, not a price to be paid to get North Korea to return to negotiations," DeTrani also said.
As the U.S. is currently facing a heap of domestic issues and other international issues such as the Iran nuclear deal, some suggest that South Korea must persuade the U.S. to maintain focus on the peninsula.
"In order to make the North Korea issue run in tandem with the Iranian one under the Biden team, the government needs to ask the U.S. to appoint a North Korea czar in charge of coordinating policy toward Pyongyang as it is considering an Asia czar to focus on issues involving China. The czar would be more empowered than a special envoy in handling the nuclear issue," Shin said.
Stressing that the special envoy should be an influential figure who receives bipartisan support, Cheong also said, "With Biden likely to focus on the virus crisis, it may be wise for Seoul to persuade Washington to entrust Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to act as the administration's No. 2 in high-level talks with the North Korean leader's sister Kim Yo-jong, who is in charge of policy toward South Korea and the U.S. Such talks may be able to forge major and substantial compromises between the two sides."
Following the collapse of the Hanoi summit, inter-Korean relations have also seen little progress, with the North ignoring calls from the South for bilateral economic and public healthcare cooperation amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
"North Korea, at least for now, knows that what it wants in terms of sanctions relief and regime legitimization can only come from the United States. That is why the Kim regime is so focused on talking with Washington, as Washington is key to ending this 70-year on-and-off crisis," Kazianis said.
Shin advised the Moon administration to adopt "strategic patience" toward the North for the time being.
"When things do not go its way, the North gives the cold shoulder to the South. In that sense, we are required to remain calm and patient rather than repeatedly calling for inter-Korean cooperation," he said. "It is amateurish to believe that our goodwill will elicit the same from the North."
Since his election campaign, Biden has signaled that his foreign policy will focus on multilateral cooperation, shedding new light on the six-party talks on the denuclearization of the peninsula, a multilateral forum, composed of the U.S., China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas, that has been suspended since 2008.
"I'm a supporter of the six-party talks, having worked with this multilateral group of nations that, in fact, succeeded in getting North Korea to sign the Joint Statement of 2005, that committed North Korea to dismantle all nuclear weapons and facilities," DeTrani said.
"Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula affects more than the U.S. Obviously, it affects the ROK profoundly, while also affecting Japan, China and Russia."
Kim also said the multilateral framework could serve as a supplementary means in re-engaging with the North. "What I want to make an overture to is making the multilateral forum a minister- or even president-level negotiation, which I believe could be more effective," he said.
However, Kazianis advocated direct talks between the U.S. and the North.
"Institutionalizing such talks in a formal six-party sort of manner will just allow the Kim regime to stall for time, break the sanctions regime even more than it has now and get us nowhere," Kazianis said.
Cheong proposed that four-party talks are more desirable ahead of the six-party forum, citing Beijing's cooperation.
"Chinese cooperation is the biggest issue in the North Korean denuclearization process. If the U.S. government is unable to get active cooperation from China on the North Korean nuclear issue, it will struggle to succeed in negotiations with the North," he said. "If four-party talks begin and should they result in real progress, then a time will come to expand them further to include Russia and Japan in a reconstituted six-party talk framework."
