Stephen Nulty 9:13 pm on May 22, 2018
Tags: , , mount mantap, ,   

Tuesday 22 May 2018 – Trump/Kim summit UPDATE – “substantial chance may not happen”

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President Trump hosted South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the White House today to discuss the situation with the planned meeting between Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un in Singapore on 12 June.  That meeting was placed in doubt after the North complained last week about the latest US-South Korea military drills and the comments of US National Security Adviser John Bolton that the North could follow the “Libyan model” of denuclearisation and they also cancelled planned talks with South Korea.  As I wrote in my post last week, the North took exception to the “Libyan model” idea as Libya descended into chaos and its leader Colonel Gaddafi was brutally murdered by pro-Western rebels within a few years of him doing a deal with the West over ridding Libya of its nuclear programme.  That is not a route that Kim Jong-un intends for himself.


Despite optimism from Donald Trump on Friday that the planned summit between him and Kim Jong-un would probably go ahead, as well as him contradicting John Bolton and giving a reassurance that the “Libyan model” wasn’t what he had in mind for North Korea (related video),  Trump seems to have become more circumspect on the subject today after meeting Mr Moon.  He continues to insist that “denuclearisation must take place,”  but is using language that suggests he is thinking that it is possible the North will not meet this requirement and that the summit will not happen.  Nevertheless, he said that there was a “very substantial chance” that the summit may not happen, but also that it might happen “later.”  Other than the repeated insistence on denuclearisation, the Trump administration has not specified any terms they will take into the meeting or conditions that Mr Kim must meet.  Mr Trump added: “We’ll see what happens. There are certain conditions that we want and I think we’ll get those conditions and if we don’t we don’t have the meeting. […] You never know about deals. You go into deals that are 100% certain – it doesn’t happen. You go into deals that have no chance and it happens and, sometimes, happens easily.”

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Photo: Moon Jae-in (left) with Donald Trump and John Bolton at the White House today


President Moon remained optimistic that the meeting would go ahead and that it would achieve a dramatic breakthrough, which he credited Mr Trump for.  Speaking about Mr Trump, Mr Moon said: “Thanks to your vision of achieving peace through strength and your strong leadership, we are looking forward to the first US-North Korea summit and we find ourselves standing one step closer to the dream of achieving the complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and world peace. Moon said, sitting alongside Trump in the Oval Office. All of this was possible because of you, Mr President, and I have no doubt that you will be able to complete and accomplish an historic feat that no one has been able to achieve in the decades past.”


South Korea’s Director of the National Security Office in Seoul, Chung Eui-yong, said: “We believe there is a 99.9% chance the North Korea-US summit will be held as scheduled. But we are just preparing for many different possibilities.”  Mr Chung continued: “We’re trying to understand the situation from the North’s perspective. South Korea and the US have been sharing every bit of information and have remained in close coordination with each other.” Chung added, according to Yonhap News. “We’ve had various working-level discussions on how to steer North Korea in a direction that we want, and I expect (Moon and Trump) will have great talks this time.”


Speaking about the potential summit, US Deputy Assistant Secretary Of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Mike Fuchs, said: “We’ve now entered the ‘who knew North Korea was so hard?’  phase of Trump’s diplomacy. […] North Korea is beginning to play hardball, as expected. Trump and Moon must ensure that the two allies are on the same page about  how to approach North Korea, and what to expect. If the allies are not coordinated, Kim Jong-un will exploit any daylight in the US-South Korea alliance to the detriment of both Washington and Seoul.”


The New York Times reported on Sunday that the President has been consulting with his advisers over whether the meeting with Mr Kim should go ahead.  The meeting, if it happens and regardless of whether it achieves any concrete deal, would be historic.  It would be the first meeting between a North Korean leader and a sitting US President and, as the BBC points out today, both sides have too much at stake for it not to go ahead.  As I’ve said in previous blog posts, the issue of denuclearisation is central and Mr Kim’s belief that possession of nuclear weapons is his guarantee that he and his family dynasty will remain in power in North Korea. 


Furthermore, Pyongyang’s interpretation of “denuclearisation” is likely to be very different from how the Americans understand it.  Washington will insist on “comprehensive, verifiable and irreversible” nuclear disarmament, while the North may be thinking that the removal of US forces in South Korea is part of what they see as denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula – as the US forces of course have access to nuclear weapons, regardless of whether they are currently deployed in the region (which, undoubtedly, they are).  It seems highly likely that the North will not accept US forces in South Korea while they are expected to give up nuclear weapons, and it seems even more unlikely that the US will retreat from South Korea after 65 years defending the country.


The North, in the meantime, continues the process of dismantling their nuclear test site in Punggye-ri, which they said they would do as a gesture of goodwill ahead of the planned meeting with Trump.  Of course, the North has decided to close the site as they have been having problems with it and because they now have nuclear weapons and no longer feel the need to test them (related article).  A group of Western journalists, plus some from China and Russia, were due to visit the site today and are currently in Wonsan, a North Korean port, waiting for the weather to permit them to continue on to Punggye-ri.  The journalists include Sky News’ Tom Cheshire, who tweeted this morning: “Update. We won’t be going to Punggye-ri tonight because of the weather. Not clear when it will be.”  The site in Punggye-ri is situated below Mount Mantap and is the only active nuclear site in North Korea and, in fact, in the world.

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