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Together, North and South Korea confront Joe Biden with what may be the most unnerving foreign policy problems of his presidency.
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Trump will go on forever claiming to have averted a second Korean War by meeting Kim, but he cut short their second summit in Hanoi in February 2019 after Kim held fast against any real deal on denuclearization. Then, amid renewed hopes, Trump got nowhere with Kim four months later when they met at Panmunjom on the line between the two Koreas while Trump was in South Korea seeing President Moon Jae-in, an impassioned advocate of dialogue.
For Biden, the choices are limited. They range between "strategic patience," the policy pursued when Biden was vice president under President Barack Obama, to renewed negotiations in search of compromise.
One factor that Biden must consider is Moon's ongoing search for reconciliation. Moon is likely to be among the first foreign leaders to call on Biden. He's sure to impress on Biden his desire for dialogue on multiple levels and venues between Americans and North Koreans and between North and South Koreans.
Having met Kim at three summits beginning with their first rendezvous at Panmunjom in April 2018, Moon has been stymied in his attempts to see the North Korean leader ever since the end of the Trump-Kim dialogue. At his New Year's press conference, he expressed his eagerness to see Kim anywhere, any time. That will be difficult as long as North Korea accuses Moon of placing top priority on South Korea's historic alliance with the U.S.
Other plots are conceivable. There's virtually no chance of restarting the six-party dialogue involving the two Koreas, the U.S., China, and two nations that also have a significant stake in North Korea ― Japan and Russia ― but what about four-party talks, including China, the U.S. and both Koreas? South Koreans, mooting that idea, forget that four-party talks in the late 1990s got nowhere.
Another much discussed notion is an end-of-war agreement advocated by Moon. North Korea, however, wants to replace the Korean War Armistice Agreement signed at Panmunjom in July 1953 with a peace treaty calling for the withdrawal of U.S. military power on the way to eventual takeover of the South.
Given the realities, preliminary talks might provide insights into Kim's real thinking. Might desperation compel him to soften his position, perhaps to suspend or curtail his nuclear program?
Fantasies of a breakthrough will evaporate if Kim orders more missile tests. He talked at this month's party congress of a new supersonic submarine and showed off a submarine-launched ballistic missile at the parade after the congress. Trump may claim the summitry of 2018 and 2019 got Kim to suspend all testing since his last nuclear test in September 2017 and the last test of a long-range missile two months later, but the North Koreans have been busy all along developing more nukes and missiles.
In the interests of a smooth relationship with Biden, Moon will endorse the U.S.-Korean alliance, but that's not going too smoothly for reasons that have nothing to do with the North's nuclear program. Questions surround OPCON, the deal for South Korea to assume operational control of forces in the event of war. South Korean and U.S. forces need to test their capabilities under OPCON in intricate joint exercises that infuriate the North Koreans.
Complicating matters, the U.S. and South Korea have to resolve contentious differences on the South's contribution to the costs of keeping U.S. bases and 28,500 U.S. troops in the country. Trump badly upset the alliance by demanding South Korea pay $5 billion a year, more than five times the $927 million paid in 2019. Biden's team will be looking for an agreement on around $1 billion.
The overwhelming problem is that North Korea, after all Trump's boasts, his showmanship, his dream of a Nobel Peace Prize, remains a de facto nuclear power holding its nukes and missiles like a club over South Korea, Japan and the U.S. Economic failure, however, means that Kim cannot easily make good on his big talk at the party congress. Now he has to reckon with Biden, a realist whom he neglected to congratulate for defeating his friend Donald Trump in November's presidential election.
Donald Kirk, www.donaldkirk.com, writes from both Seoul as well as Washington.
