North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday pledged to make peace, but many details in their joint declaration…
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday pledged to make peace, but many details in their joint declaration have yet to be worked out. Comments are edited for clarity and grammar:
This means President Trump is cleaning up what President Clinton screwed up and President Obama couldn’t fix.
— James Fogarty
Congratulations to President Moon and Chinese President Xi Jinping for getting things this far. This shows the power of the Olympics. Having the Winter Games held in Pyeongchang is what I think sparked enough trust for the Koreas to start a dialogue.
— Scott Hardy
Vladimir Putin has said that the United States should not engage in war with North Korea. Since Trump takes his cues from Putin on foreign policy, the credit for Korean peace talks should go to the Russian leader.
— Matthew Philips
Even if the North Koreans end their nuclear program, they will maintain their large army and continue to be a threat to South Korea. I suspect what will bring North Korea down is the opportunity for its people to experience Western goods and services, instead of starvation and continuous propaganda.
— Roger Goppelt
I don’t see Kim agreeing to a unification. He would lose all power, and the South would demand a democracy. Kim is not going to give up his lavish lifestyle and the control over his people. There will be a lot of fluff over the next couple of months, but all that’s going to come of it is an official end to the war and a slight improvement in trade. But people from both countries will not be able to travel to the other. If North Koreans see for themselves that they’ve been lied to for decades and that the South is far more advanced, they’ll want to overthrow him. What Kim wants is peace for now, and China and the U. S. to leave the area.
— Daniel Hamilton
Max Boot, The Washington Post: “The two Koreas do not have the power to conclude a peace treaty because South Korea was not a party to the 1953 armistice. It was an agreement between the United States (acting on behalf of the United Nations Command), China and North Korea. If there is to be a peace treaty, it will involve those powers, not just South Korea. Kim will welcome a peace agreement if it hastens the departure of U. S. troops, but he will try to deal with the United States directly. He will not want to officially recognize South Korea as an independent state, because doing so would force him to renounce 70 years of regime propaganda that the Kim family is destined to rule the entire peninsula on behalf of the Korean ‘workers.’ ”
Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times: “When North Korea talks about ‘complete denuclearization,’ it typically means that the U. S. ends its alliance with South Korea, and then North Korea will no longer need nuclear weapons to defend itself. But the U. S. won’t give up the South. And North Korea has been pursuing nuclear weapons since the 1950s, and I don’t know any expert who thinks that it will genuinely hand over its arsenal.”
Harry J. Kazianis, Fox News: “But give President Trump the credit he deserves — he has successfully de-escalated the biggest of threats: the possibility of a war with North Korea where nuclear weapons could have been used in mass, with millions of people dying as a result. This is no small accomplishment — and certainly worth the Nobel Peace Prize.”
Wendy Sherman and Evans Revere, Time: “The main reason we are where we are today is because North Korea has walked away from every denuclearization agreement ever reached. The regime clearly wants nuclear weapons more than any inducement. And it has not changed its behavior in the face of sanctions.”
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