Despite all the talk of a Trump-Kim summit, South Korea’s Moon Jae-in will meet the North Korean leader first.
The March 9 announcement of a potential late May summit between President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un was greeted with surprise and even consternation by many analysts and Korea watchers. Despite the unprecedented possibility of a sitting U. S. president meeting with North Korea’s leader, many questions remain regarding Pyongyang’s possible motives and also what if anything can be achieved by such a hastily arranged summit, particularly with such an ill-prepared White House.
These doubts have only increased with the recent firing (by presdiential tweet) of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Tillerson’s replacement, CIA director Mike Pompeo, will not face Senate confirmation hearings until April. Furthermore, there is discussion that Trump’s national security advisor, General H. R. McMaster, is also on the way out, possibly to be replaced by John Bolton, a former U. S. ambassador to the United Nations under George W. Bush. Bolton is a well-known hardliner on North Korea, who during his time in the Bush administration referred to members of the State Department’s East Asia Bureau as the “EAPeasers” for favoring diplomacy rather than force. He has repeatedly called for the military option against Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile program.
Constant speculation about the Trump-Kim summit and the seemingly endless tumult emanating from the White House has crowded out attention on another important and far more certain event, namely, the inter-Korean summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un. The third-ever inter-Korean summit meeting is due to be held at the truce village of Panmunjom in late April.
Although the causal role of Trump’s more aggressive stance toward North Korea should not be discounted, both Seoul and Pyongyang played a significant (if not definitive) part in fostering recent talks, reducing tensions, and laying the groundwork for any future breakthrough.
