Defusing a nuclear North Korea will take cool heads and serious thought, not bravado and self-interest

The sporting games of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics are over, but the geopolitical games of the Korean peninsula go on. Indeed, the daring twists and turns on the ice are being matched by political manoeuvres that open fascinating, as well as troubling, prospects.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has embarked on a campaign to woo South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, as if Kim is a chubbier version of Pyeongchang’s smiling tiger mascot. But the United States, China, Russia and Japan are still set in old ways of thinking.

The situation is rather like a fiery volcano dormant for 65 years – an armistice after the war but no peace. Lately, there have been ominous rumblings: Kim’s nuclear and missile tests and threats to rain fire and brimstone on the US, and US President Donald Trump’s taunts about having a bigger and better nuclear arsenal than the “little rocket man” in North Korea. Meanwhile, South Korea’s Moon worked hard to get the North Koreans to join “the peace Olympics”.

North Korea won no medals, but its athletes and officials were greeted with popular acclaim. Its cheerleaders won a charm offensive, which soured after defectors claimed that the glamorous women doubled as sex slaves for the North Korean leadership. The invitation from Kim’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, to Moon to visit the North clearly delighted him. With her youth and ready smile, Kim Yo-jong was a winning contrast to US Vice-President Mike Pence, who sat sullenly in his seat when the Korean team entered at the opening ceremony. Then, this week, Kim Jong-un sat down to dinner with a delegation from the South and toasted them. The meeting led to the promise of a Korean summit next month, symbolically in the Panmunjeom border village that divides North from South Korea. South Korea’s national security director, Chung Eui-yong, said the North had agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons if it received credible security guarantees from the US, and would halt nuclear and missile tests for “heart to heart talks” with the US.

One caveat is that the news of the summit came from the South; North Korea remained strangely silent. Another caveat is three previous rounds of talks over North Korea’s security led nowhere. And then there is Trump, who immediately boasted that he was the reason why potential peace talks had happened. Moon himself seems more naive and trusting than his predecessors, Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, who both visited Pyongyang bearing lavish gifts of aid and investment, but failed to halt North Korea’s nuclear weapons drive.

It would be a mistake to see Kim as a chubby version of Pyeongchang’s smiling tiger mascot. Except in fairy tales, there are no cuddly tigers, and Kim is certainly not one. He showed ruthlessness in removing and executing relatives and senior colleagues of his father. North Korea is impoverished by mismanagement and militarisation, but it has shown great resourcefulness in evading sanctions and getting money and supplies for its nuclear ambitions.

Kim’s wooing of Moon is an obvious attempt to detach him from the US. He has seen through Trump’s empty braggadocio and knows that US defence secretary General James Mattis has warned Trump that a war with North Korea would be “catastrophic” and that a pre-emptive strike against the North’s weapons would be too difficult.