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Korea | With the nuclear-use threshold lowered, a regional arms race underway, diplomacy dead and communications channels silent, the flashpoint Korean peninsula faces a slew of challenges.
The Ukraine war is also offering North Korea fresh opportunities to exit its diplomatic and economic isolation, putting even more pressure on South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol as he prepares for this week’s state visit to Washington that was supposed to celebrate the coming 70th anniversary of the U.S.-South Korean alliance.
Now a leading liberal voice in Seoul on nuclear issues is urging the conservative Mr. Yoon and President Biden to look to the example set by former President Donald Trump and reopen “imaginative and realistic” communication with Kim Jong Un, the North’s mercurial leader.
“Now is one of the worst times ever,” warned Moon Chung-in, vice chairman of the Asia-Pacific Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation. “U.S.-North Korea relations have hit rock bottom, China has become a kind of bystander — it is moving away from peninsula issues — and inter-Korean relations are very bad.”
Mr. Moon has a deep familiarity with the crisis, having advised all three South Korean presidents who have summited with North Korean leaders, and has joined every presidential delegation Seoul has dispatched to Pyongyang over the years.
“North Korea is an existential threat, so we have to prepare for any kind of military provocation, but at the same time, we should come up with dialogue and negotiations,” he insisted in an interview. “But we have only the first component; the second is all gone.”
Though Mr. Moon is a leading voice in liberal circles, he praises the unorthodox, personal approach taken by Mr. Trump. “Trump knew there is only one person who makes decisions in North Korea, and that is Kim Jong Un,” he said.
A Kim-Trump 2018 summit in Singapore summit laid the groundwork for a second summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2019. There, Mr. Kim offered up his central nuclear facility, Yongbyon, in return for partial sanctions relief.
That cautious start point could have led to an ongoing process of trust building, but Mr.
