This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/world/asia/north-korea-winter-olympics.html

The article has changed 5 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 2 Version 3
Suddenly, an Olympic Charm Offensive From Kim Jong-un North Korea Moves Toward Détente With Seoul
(about 9 hours later)
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, spent 2017 rattling the world with nuclear and long-range missile tests. Now, the new year has brought him an ideal opportunity for a sudden charm offensive: the Winter Olympics. WASHINGTON — North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, spent 2017 rattling the world with nuclear and long-range missile tests and has promised more of the same in 2018. So it was a surprise when he deftly seized on the Winter Olympics on Tuesday to turn toward diplomacy with Seoul, playing the part of the statesman even while accentuating fractures in the seven-decade alliance between South Korea and the United States.
The announcement on Tuesday that the North would participate in the Olympics in the South Korean town of Pyeongchang next month — and that the Koreas would hold a variety of talks and other exchanges aimed at defusing tensions — was welcomed in the South as a reprieve from a tense year, marked by rapid advances in the North’s nuclear program and repeated threats of war from both Mr. Kim and President Trump. After his outreach to Seoul on New Year’s Day, Mr. Kim agreed to send a team to compete in the Olympics next month when the Winter Games open in the South Korean town of Pyeongchang. That was followed by an announcement about resumption of military-to-military talks between the two countries — without the United States.
But few said they believed that Mr. Kim was motivated by the Olympic spirit. All this is a relief to South Korea’s leader, President Moon Jae-in, who feared the North would find a way — missile launches, terrorism, a nuclear test — to cast a pall over a sports event meant to highlight the South’s emergence as one of the world’s most dynamic economies.
“Kim Jong-un’s priority is to head off President Trump’s threat to take military action against his government and to ease the impact of sanctions,” said Paik Hak-soon, a senior analyst at the Sejong Institute in South Korea. “Pyeongchang provides a perfect opportunity.” Few in Seoul or Washington believe Mr. Kim, though an avid sports fan, is motivated solely by the Olympic spirit. The Winter Games also present him with an ideal opportunity to throw a wrench in President Trump’s threats of military action if the North does not agree to give up its nuclear program.
Hints of Mr. Kim’s strategy could be found in his annual New Year’s Day speech, during which he proposed that the Koreas discuss the possibility of the North sending a delegation to the Games. Along the way, Mr. Kim is looking to get some relief from sanctions that are beginning to bite, and to bring China back to its traditional position — that no one should disturb the status quo, even if that means tolerating a North Korea armed with nuclear weapons.
In the speech, Mr. Kim expressed confidence that the North’s nuclear weapons would prevent the United States from starting a war on the Korean Peninsula, boasting of a “nuclear button” on his desk. But he told his people to brace themselves for the effects of United Nations sanctions, which reportedly have begun to pinch. “This was a very smart move and underscores how we are in a longstanding habit of underestimating the North,” said Nicholas Eberstadt, a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute who has spent decades studying North Korea. “If they can punch a hole through the maximum-pressure coalition and it starts to leak, it gives them more room and more time to achieve their objective, which is all about the nuclear program.”
Mr. Kim then extended an olive branch to the South, urging it to break ranks with Washington on the issue of sanctions. He called for “fellow countrymen” in both Koreas to work together for peace, an appeal certain to resonate with many South Korean progressives. It is a strategy meant to resonate with many South Korean progressives who argue that defusing tensions on the peninsula has to be Seoul’s top priority. And it pointedly excluded the United States, although South Korea stresses that it is in close consultation with Washington over its dealings with the North.
Soon after Mr. Kim’s speech, Pyongyang restored a hotline between the governments of the two Koreas after a two-year hiatus. By the end of the week, both sides had agreed to hold the talks that took place on Tuesday at the border village of Panmunjom, where it was announced that the North would send athletes to the Olympics, as well as a cheering squad and even a performance-art troupe. By leaving bombast out of his speech last week and even appearing before the cameras in a Western-style suit and tie, Mr. Kim clearly wants to be seen as a statesman.
In a joint statement, both Koreas also said on Tuesday that they would hold more high-level discussions and promote exchanges in various fields, including dialogue between their militaries, to ease tensions and to “foster national reconciliation and solidarity.” Mr. Trump, who has promised to “totally destroy” the North if it puts the United States at risk, has already claimed credit for the new tone. The latest United Nations Security Council sanctions, issued last month, were intended to threaten the North’s energy supplies and its opportunities to earn hard currency. Both have fueled the North’s surprising economic growth.
If the talks between the Koreas lead to substantial negotiations, it could undercut Mr. Trump’s threats of war while also lessening pressure on China to tighten sanctions further. But any new provocation from the North, such as another missile test, could quickly change that. What Mr. Kim is not discussing with the South is the future of his nuclear weapons and missile programs. Many experts fear that is exactly the point: Relief from tightening sanctions or threat of American attack may gave his engineers time to perfect a warhead able to hit the continental United States.
Koh Yu-hwan, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul, said of Mr. Kim, “His peace offensive is leading to the first steps in a transition from confrontation and rising tensions to easing tensions and peace on the peninsula.” The evidence of that came on Tuesday when Ri Son-kwon, the chief North Korean delegate to the talks, protested when South Korea called for the resumption of denuclearization discussions, according to pool reports. And none are scheduled.
Mr. Kim may have chosen to reach out to the South because the sanctions against his country are hurting, or because he is rattled by Mr. Trump’s threats of military action, analysts said. Or it could be that he is satisfied with the progress of his country’s nuclear program and sees this as the right time for a deal. To drive home the point Mr. Ri said, according to the same reports, “Our cutting-edge weapons, including our hydrogen bomb and intercontinental ballistic missiles, are not targeting our Korean brothers, China or Russia, but the United States.”
But if his intent was to divide the South from the United States by appealing to South Koreans’ ethnic nationalism, as well as to their longing for a thaw after months of tensions, he could hardly have chosen a better way than through sports. Mr. Kim has made no secret of his determination to keep his nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. In his New Year’s speech, he described his country’s atomic arsenal as the only thing preventing the United States from starting a war on the Korean Peninsula, boasting of the “nuclear button” on his desk. That led to Mr. Trump’s retort that he has “a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”
Despite the Koreas’ longstanding enmity, South Koreans often cheer for the North’s athletes in international competition. As early as 1964, the two Koreas discussed fielding a joint Olympic team, an idea that has resurfaced over the decades but never come to pass. (In 1991, the Koreas did send joint delegations to table-tennis and youth soccer tournaments.) The mine-is-bigger exchange obscured two more important elements of the speech. Mr. Kim told his people to brace themselves for the effects of sanctions, which have led to fuel shortages and significantly higher prices. It was the first admission that Mr. Trump’s campaign was getting to Mr. Kim.
Mr. Kim also urged the South to break ranks with Washington on the issue of sanctions and begin talks about the Olympics. Mr. Moon has been worried about a North Korean disruption of the Winter Games, and his staff members told American officials that South Korea wanted to suspend military exercises with the United States during the Olympics and find a role for the North, which won seven medals in the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro.
Senior American officials said they had no choice but to accede to Mr. Moon’s appeals. Mr. Trump agreed in a Jan. 4 phone call with Mr. Moon to suspend the military exercises, and said at Camp David over the weekend that “I’d like to see them getting involved in the Olympics and maybe things go from there.”
The Games end in late February. In Washington, it is widely believed that no military action would happen until afterward, in the event that diplomatic routes fail.
The Pentagon has drawn up extensive plans, including a punch-in-the-nose strategy against the North that would involve taking out a missile, and a much broader attack on the missile and nuclear sites. But both Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson have argued internally that it would be nearly impossible to contain any retaliation, officials have said.
The State Department welcomed Tuesday’s talks at the Demilitarized Zone, but Heather Nauert, the department’s spokeswoman, said South Korean officials “will ensure North Korean participation in the Winter Olympics does not violate the sanctions.”
Both the North and South have engaged in this dance before.
Twenty-six years ago, just as the Soviet Union was disappearing, the countries signed a treaty of reconciliation and nonaggression that promised to formally bring an end to the Korean War as well as re-establish telephone lines, mail and economic exchanges. Most of that agreement has never been realized.
But if Mr. Kim and Mr. Moon were to move to revitalizing that agreement, they would greatly complicate Mr. Trump’s military threat and could well undermine the international effort to get China to further tighten sanctions against Pyongyang.
“It gives the Chinese government the chance to do what it wishes to do: Pull back on the pressure that the Americans are intent on building,” Mr. Eberstadt noted.
Any provocation from the North, especially another intercontinental missile test or an atmospheric test of a nuclear weapon, could change that dynamic. And that would work to the advantage of the United States, which knows that testing is critical to Mr. Kim’s ambition to prove, beyond doubt, that he can target American cities.
The core of the debate in Seoul is whether Mr. Kim’s overture is a tactical move, or represents an entirely new strategy.
“His peace offensive is leading to the first steps in a transition from confrontation and rising tensions to easing tensions and peace on the peninsula,” said Koh Yu-hwan, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul.
But if his intent was to divide the South from the United States, Mr. Kim has his moment.
South Korea’s ethnic nationalism has always been a major factor in its politics; in the late 1980s, there were more protests against the United States’ military presence in the South than against the North’s threats. And for those South Koreans longing for a thaw after months of tensions, Mr. Kim could hardly have chosen a better way than through sports.
Despite the Koreas’ longstanding enmity, South Koreans often cheer for the North’s athletes in international competition. As early as 1964, the two Koreas discussed fielding a joint Olympic team, an idea that has resurfaced over the decades.
In 2000, however — the year the two Koreas held their first summit meeting — athletes from both countries marched together at the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics. They did so again at the Athens Games in 2004, carrying a blue and white flag representing a unified Korea. Their athletes last marched together at the Asian Winter Games in Changchun, China, in 2007.In 2000, however — the year the two Koreas held their first summit meeting — athletes from both countries marched together at the opening ceremony of the Sydney Olympics. They did so again at the Athens Games in 2004, carrying a blue and white flag representing a unified Korea. Their athletes last marched together at the Asian Winter Games in Changchun, China, in 2007.
“I want to see the same glory again,” President Moon Jae-in of South Korea said in June, suggesting that the two nations march together in Pyeongchang. On Tuesday, South Korean officials said the two sides were close to agreeing that they would do so. “I want to see the same glory again,” President Moon said in June, suggesting that the two nations march together in Pyeongchang. On Tuesday, South Korean officials said the two sides were close to agreeing that they would do so.
In Mr. Moon, Mr. Kim has a willing partner in his peace offensive. For months, he has called for dialogue with the North and urged its participation in the Olympics, while objecting to the Trump administration’s talk of possible military action. To accommodate the North, Mr. Moon also offered not to hold his country’s joint military exercises with the United States during the Olympics.
For Mr. Moon, too, Mr. Kim’s overture could hardly have come at a more opportune time.
His government has had trouble selling Olympic tickets. But now there is the prospect of throngs of Koreans cheering together at the Games for athletes from North and South. Such scenes could help deflect conservatives’ criticism of Mr. Moon’s policy of promoting dialogue with the North.
“Sports diplomacy is a sexy affair,” said Lee Sung-yoon, a Korea expert at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. “Pyongyang has all the reason to jazz up the Winter Olympiad and be the center of attention.”
Mr. Moon apparently hopes that this thaw will lead to broader negotiations, involving Washington, about how to end the North’s nuclear program. But like the rest of the world, he will be well aware that past moments of optimism regarding North Korea have ended in disappointment. Ri Son-kwon, the chief North Korean delegate to the talks on Tuesday, protested when South Korea called for the resumption of denuclearization talks, according to pool reports.
“The South and North have different motives behind the peace offensive,” said Mr. Koh of Dongguk University. “The North wants the world to accept it as a nuclear weapons state and live in peace with it. The South promotes peace to denuclearize the North.”