Last year, the world looked set for a return to war in Korea. For the first half of this year, the narrative suddenly changed. But now the peace process is looking more like a short-lived peace performance instead.
Today we ask what’s going on beneath the headlines.
There’s no need to review the mudslinging of 2017. Things got so entertaining it almost tempted me to join Twitter.
The ceaseless missile tests are memorable too. Each nation’s media drew circles around Pyongyang, estimating Kim Jong-un’s range in their direction. I conveniently travelled well within the confirmed range in June 2017 when I visited Japan.
But suddenly, in 2018, Kim and Donald Trump found themselves in Singapore, shaking hands and lauding their peace deal. American soldiers’ remains were delivered back home, Kim agreed to denuclearise and stop testing missiles, and Trump agreed to put an end to military drills on North Korea’s doorstep. Perhaps even to lighten sanctions.
The former American politician Newt Gingrich claimed “President Trump has already accomplished more with North Korea than Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama combined.”
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said the president should be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his role.
And Trump himself tweeted on the way home from the summit that, “everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a Nuclear Threat from North Korea.”
But before he landed, things already began to look a little iffy.
The North Korean media reported one version of the deal. The Western media a very different one.
Slowly, over time, the divergence seems to be widening into a rift. A rift that opened wide enough for all to see this month.
First, the North Koreans went back to their old insults. They described American diplomacy as “gangster like”. Especially because the US had merely moved its training exercises to Okinawa in Japan and the Philippines, instead of suspending them as promised.
The American intelligence agencies claim to have evidence the North Koreans are not dismantling their nuclear facilities. In fact, the satellite images show deliberate attempts to fool the US into thinking they had.
A United Nations report confirmed as much.
After the Koreans sent a nasty letter to the White House, President Trump told his secretary of state not to travel to Pyongyang for further negotiations. The North Koreans were not making enough progress, Trump claimed.
According to the German newspaper Der Spiegel, the peace process is now dead and buried.
Meanwhile, the PR side of the deal has continued between North and South Korea. Relatives separated for decades were able to meet once more.
So what’s really going on?
Just buying time
In April, Kim’s nuclear testing facility brought down a mountain on top of itself. Chinese scientists identified the collapse, which occurred after the sixth nuclear test there. They are worried it may leak radiation.
As the Guardian newspaper put it, this “puts Kim Jong-un’s pledge to no longer use site in a new light.”
But the light is far from new. North Korean dictators with the surname Kim have a steady habit of negotiating for peace. For a while. And yet, the initiative never seems to get very far…
A Fox News opinion piece described the feeling of déjà vu like this:
At the summit between North and South Korean leaders on Friday, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un became the third member of Kim dynasty to meet his South Korean counterpart – in this case, President Moon Jae-in. They shook hands and pledged – as their predecessors did – to end hostilities between the two nations and work towards denuclearization of the peninsula.
Is this a case of “third time lucky” or “fool me thrice”?
Fox News also provided a hard-hitting timeline of past peace efforts going back to 2000 and how they ended badly. But The Week does a better job of the summary:
Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, who came to power in 1994 after the death of his father, Kim Il Sung, agreed to end nuclear weapons or missile activities that year — and then again in 2000, 2005, and 2007. Each time, Pyongyang secretly continued its nuclear tests and missile development. The U.S., said then–Defense Secretary Robert Gates in 2009, is “tired of buying the same horse twice.
The question now is whether Trump sees Kim’s deception as enough of a reason to go to war, or whether he waits for a more immediate threat from North Korea.
The US midterm elections are set for 6 November and Trump looks set to lose the lower house of Congress to the Democrats. If he does, he’s likely to be impeached.
Time for something drastic?
Until next time,
Nick Hubble
Capital & Conflict
Category: Geopolitics