On the second day of a three-day summit between Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong Un, the leaders of the two Koreas made bold declarations that Pyongyang was on its way to denuclearization.
On the second day of a three-day summit between Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong Un, the leaders of the two Koreas made bold declarations that Pyongyang was on its way to denuclearization.
The South Korean president exhorted that total denuclearization was “not far away“ (paywall), while Kim said he was “committed to working toward a peaceful peninsula without nuclear weapons or nuclear threat.”
Join 500,000+ readers who start their day with Quartz.
By subscribing, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
The so-called September Declaration included commitments to varying degrees of denuclearization, including a pledge to shut down a missile launch pad and to allow international inspectors to the site. Melissa Hanham, a senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California, laid out in a Twitter $TWTR thread that the agreement ultimately still falls short of a real commitment by Kim to give up his nuclear weapons, and that what he agreed to did not rule out the possibility that Pyongyang could continue to test missiles from other locations, including from mobile launchers.
Duyeon Kim, an adjunct senior fellow at the Washington DC-based Center for a New American Security, said the nuclear issue simply hasn’t “moved forward.”
However, insofar as Moon’s goal was to try to bridge the gap between North Korea and the US and keep relations between the two smooth, some believe that the South Korean president was successful. Andrei Lankov, a veteran North Korea watcher in Seoul, said that it was in South Korea’s interest to “create an impression that the North Koreans are willing to denuclearize even if this has no relation to reality,” as both sides are worried that the US could revert to its policy of “maximum pressure.”
Mintaro Oba, a former US diplomat with a focus on North Korean diplomacy, said that North Korea managed to show that it’s still “acting in good faith” with its latest commitments, while Seoul is using diplomacy to push the US to re-engage with Pyongyang as relations between the two countries have soured recently.
For his part, Donald Trump tweeted that he was “excited” at the outcome of the summit. Moon will visit the US on Sept. 25 to discuss the summit in North Korea with Trump. Only then may we know what the US president plans to do with the ball that Kim has so firmly planted in his court.
