South Korean Leader to Meet With Trump, Hoping to Salvage His Role as Mediator

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/world/asia/moon-jae-in-trump-meeting.html

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SEOUL, South Korea — President Moon Jae-in of South Korea will meet with President Trump in Washington on April 11, his office announced on Friday, as Mr. Moon struggles to salvage his role as a mediator between Mr. Trump and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un.

Mr. Moon has devoted his government’s diplomatic efforts to facilitating a deal between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear arms program and building lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula. But those efforts hit a wall when Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump ended their summit meeting in Vietnam last month without a deal, confirming how far apart they were on the terms of denuclearization.

Mr. Moon has since vowed to continue to work as a mediator, with his office saying that Mr. Trump had asked for that. But Washington wants Mr. Moon to focus on persuading Mr. Kim to denuclearize before expecting the United States to lift sanctions. The North, conversely, wants Mr. Moon to help ease sanctions first.

“The two heads of state will hold deep consultations with the aim of further strengthening the South Korea-United States alliance and building a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula through complete denuclearization,” Mr. Moon’s office said in a statement announcing the April meeting.

Since the breakdown of the talks in Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital, many analysts, including Mr. Moon’s conservative critics at home, have voiced concern over the future of the U.S.-South Korean alliance. Mr. Moon has alarmed conservatives by declaring that he would push for joint North-South Korean economic projects, even though the United States insists that this is not the time to ease economic pressure on the North.

A day after the Hanoi summit collapsed, Mr. Moon said he would discuss with Washington the possibility of reopening of a joint inter-Korean factory park in the North Korean city of Kaesong, as well as resuming South Korean tours of Diamond Mountain, a resort area in the North. He later told his government to look for ways to help advance the dialogue between Washington and the North “through improving South-North Korean relations.”

But Washington fears such projects will weaken the enforcement of United Nations sanctions against the North. In Hanoi, Mr. Trump “made clear the United States expects complete denuclearization before sanctions relief,” said Robert Palladino, deputy spokesman for the State Department in Washington.

Mr. Trump’s decision to halt the Hanoi summit without a deal shocked Mr. Moon as much as Mr. Kim, who had taken a 65-hour train ride to Vietnam expecting sanctions relief.

Mr. Moon is now desperate to help restart dialogue between Pyongyang and Washington to prevent them from returning to missile and nuclear tests and threats of war, which would destroy the rapprochement Mr. Moon has helped build on the peninsula in the past year.

“The situation remains difficult for us following the Hanoi summit,” Kim Eui-kyeom, a spokesman for Mr. Moon, said on Friday. “We fear what might happen should things start falling apart.”

That was Mr. Kim’s last comment as presidential spokesman. He said he was leaving the post after the conservative opposition and news media outlets accused him of seeking huge profits through real estate speculation, a practice that Mr. Moon has vowed to eradicate. The spokesman denied the allegation but still decided to step down.

During the Hanoi summit meeting, North Korea insisted on a phased rollback of its nuclear program and wanted Washington to lift economic sanctions up front in return for partially dismantling its nuclear facilities. Washington offered noneconomic incentives, like signing a peace declaration and exchanging liaison offices, but demanded that North Korea fully denuclearize first if it wanted sanctions relief.

Lee Do-hoon, a senior South Korean nuclear negotiator, told reporters on Thursday that Seoul was pushing for a “comprehensive deal” and “phased implementation” as a compromise between North Korea and the United States.

But North Korea and the United States remain far apart.

North Korea says it sees no point in holding talks again with the United States unless it changes its stance on sanctions relief. American officials say they are open to talks with the North but are not begging for them. The summit in Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital, proved that Mr. Kim’s charm offensive no longer worked on Mr. Trump, officials have said.

“We’ve been fooled enough times,” David Stilwell, Mr. Trump’s nominee for assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said at a congressional hearing on Wednesday, referring to past talks with the North Koreans.

American officials see the continued enforcement of sanctions as key to forcing North Korea back to the table with a compromise on denuclearization. Sanctions “are having a real impact and are what ultimately, I think, has led Chairman Kim to contemplate what I believe he continues to contemplate,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday.