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As a South Korean living in America, it was clear to me why Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un's summit failed

Hanoi was about Trump’s intention of getting re-elected and Kim’s desire to be seen on the world stage

Lee Onyou
New York
Thursday 28 February 2019 21:15 GMT
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North Korea's foreign minister disputes President Trump's explanation for summit collapse

When I first heard that the second United States and North Korea summit was scheduled to take place in Hanoi, I thought Vietnam was the perfect place for it. The country makes for a good example of what the future of North Korea might look like. Vietnam used to be the isolated communist country bordering China, with their guns pointed at the United States and their economy on a constant downturn. Now it has a 6 per cent annual GDP growth rate and retains control over its politics. It is, from all perspectives, a success story.

By now, however, we know that something went wrong with the summit. Both leaders ended the talks early — not even stopping to sample the expensive dinner that was being prepared for them — and Trump almost immediately departed the country. A signing ceremony which had been planned for a historic new agreement was abandoned.

As a South Korean living in America and working in government policy, I felt a moment of realisation when the talks failed: our country should have done more. President Moon Jae-in said in a presidential meeting, “The owner of the fate of the Korean peninsula is us” — and to see the owner out of the picture in such a historical summit left me with deep reservations. Trump thought that he could negotiate the future of the Korean Peninsula without the South Koreans; he imagined we weren’t needed. No doubt he’s learning from that mistake now.

Some might argue that the US was delivering messages on behalf of South Korea, but the truth is that proper discussions and consultations with the South Korean administration did not take place prior to the summit. Date and venue selection dominated almost all of the short conversations that were had. Trump had set a timezone which rendered nuanced discussion impossible.

To be in the picture — and to see some proper progress after this disappointing failure of a summit — South Korea needs to stop playing the good cop. It’s clear to see now that gestures like walking across the border together, holding hands and sharing noodles only entrenched the North’s idea that they can get what they want without giving anything up. We left discussions about denuclearization to the US, and it didn’t work. In retrospect, it was probably never going to work without our input.

What we learnt from this summit is how stubborn Kim Jong-un can be — even when he’s clearly desperate to have international sanctions lifted. And since Kim failed in such a strategy with the US, he will need to turn to either China or South Korea next. I hope we don’t lend him a hand.

I watched this summit unfold with a huge amount of optimism, despite my reservations; and I still hope that this is the first step in bringing changes to North Korea and human rights back to the North Korean people. Perhaps the haste with which this is all planned partly explains the lack of a deal. We could have waited another year or two after 70 years of constant threat. But that was never going to be a convenient timescale for Donald Trump. The US president’s bluster may work as a rhetorical strategy (or perhaps even as a ploy for the Nobel Peace Prize) but we’ve allowed ourselves to believe it will make any meaningful change for far too long.

One of the United States’ main blunders in Singapore was to sign a joint statement to, among other things, “promote the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.” American negotiators apparently took this to mean the denuclearization of North Korea, when for North Korea, it meant getting South Korea out from under America’s nuclear umbrella. For Trump, this was a bit of smiling showmanship — but it was far from a joke for the South Korean people. It’s now led to a huge amount of misunderstanding.

Whether it was strategy or a look of thought that led to South Korea being kept away from the summit, I don’t believe we’ll see proper progress until there are three-country talks. Hanoi was about Trump’s intention of getting re-elected and Kim’s desire to be seen on the world stage. Let’s hope that next time the Korean Peninsula comes under discussion, the leaders involved are interested in more than their own reputations.

Lee Onyou is the pseudonym of a South Korean intergovernmental staff member in New York

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