John Barry Kotch

Opinion | Will North Korea disarm? That may depend on how the US and China play their cards in the next phase of nuclear talks

John Barry Kotch says the North Korean nuclear negotiations are complicated by Pyongyang’s call for the removal of the US nuclear umbrella from the Korean peninsula. Presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump are also wild cards in the talks

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John Barry Kotch

Published: 10:00am, 28 Dec 2018Updated: 10:05am, 28 Dec 2018

This has been a banner year for summitry on the Korean peninsula with the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics as the precursor. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un held multiple meetings with South Korean president Moon Jae-in and Chinese President Xi Jinping, while Donald Trump met Kim briefly in Singapore, a first for a sitting US president. Now it’s all about maintaining the momentum. If Trump’s remarks reflect policy, we have gone from “fire and fury” to “love” and the present policy of contradiction. Denuclearisation is on hold, hostage to sanctions and human rights concerns. Can we find a way out of the cul-de-sac in 2019?

First, Kim would have to pay a promised visit to Seoul, in return for the Moon-Kim summit in Pyongyang in September. He would be making the trip his father, Kim Jong-il, pledged to take but never did. A successful trip south would also distinguish the son from the father as a risk taker. Ideally, Kim and Moon would issue a summit communique highlighting the need for a declaration formally ending the Korean war, which would build on the 2000 joint communique between Bill Clinton and Jo Myong-rok, Kim senior’s personal envoy, that neither the US nor North Korea would harbour hostile intent towards the other. Washington has so far been non-committal about agreeing to a peace declaration, absent progress in nuclear negotiations and given the continued expansion of Pyongyang’s nuclear stockpile.

Second, a joint rail project will give more momentum. South and North Korean engineers have just completed a weeks-long field study of the North Korean railroad, with North and South symbolically reconnecting their rail tracks. Upgrading the infrastructure to support economic development is a shovel-ready project, contingent on a meaningful step towards denuclearisation. All aboard!

Similarly, the announcement that the US would review its policy on humanitarian aid to the North, easing sanctions associated with Washington’s campaign of maximum economic and diplomatic pressure on Pyongyang, is a small step in the right direction, as has been increasingly sought by international aid groups.

Finally, given the vagueness of the communique of the Trump-Kim summit and the lack of concrete follow-up measures (such as a detailed summit agenda by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo), a second Trump-Kim summit would require a deep dive in the details of denuclearisation. Although Vice-President Mike Pence has apparently said the US “would not demand” a North Korean declaration of its nuclear and missile programmes as a precondition for a second summit, numbers, locations and the operational readiness of the arsenal would still have to be on the table. Therein lies the rub.