Is North Korea's red carpet a real sign of change or merely a ruse?
The two Koreas seem optimistic over the outcome of the
early rounds of bilateral talks, but thornier issues — notably the
North's nuclear arsenal — will prove to be far more difficult to
resolve, say analysts.
The leaders of North and South Korea
have agreed to a summit meeting
in late April, a top security adviser of South Korean President Moon
Jae-in announced Tuesday. Both countries have also agreed to set up a
telephone hotline between their leaders.
But the decision to
organize a meeting between Moon and the North's leader Kim Jong Un was
probably one of the easiest items for the two sides to agree upon. It's
too early to predict if this summit will yield any positive results in
terms of reducing tensions between North Korea and the US. Washington
has stressed that any talks with Pyongyang should address the issue of
the regime's nuclear arsenal.
The North, however, has consistently stated that its nuclear weapons guarantee its national security and are not negotiable.
Read more: Jim Mattis: 'Too early' to tell if Olympics can reduce tensions between Koreas
Speaking
in Seoul on Tuesday afternoon, Moon again emphasized the need for
dialogue with the North and insisted that his emissaries had initiated
efforts to build peace. "I think for most people, the fact that Kim was
there in person for the meeting on Monday night came as a
surprise," said Rah Jong-yil, a former head of South Korea's
intelligence agency.
"But I also believe it speaks strongly to
the effect that international sanctions are having on the regime," he
added. "If there had been no sanctions, I do not believe Kim would have
started this detente with his New Year's speech and all the moves that
we have seen since surrounding the Winter Olympics and now the
face-to-face meetings."
Referring to the five soldiers who
defected across the Demilitarized Zone in the last few months, Rah
added, "If they cannot feed their front-line troops, then the problems
that the rest of the country are facing must be very serious." And while
the US will be closely watching the North-South discussions, Rah said
Washington is unlikely to budge from its basic demand that North Korea
do away with its nuclear arsenal.
US favors sanctions
"The
US is happy to continue applying sanctions because they can see that
they are working. They have forced the North to the discussion table
already and this leverage over the regime there is only going to grow
over time," he said. Given the dire situation in the North, Rah expects
the regime to eventually concede to the US' demands in exchange for
talks, although he offered a word of caution.
"We must remember
that we have been here before and that North Korea has broken its
promises in the past. They may agree to abolish their nuclear weapons,
but the problem will be whether they actually will."
Daniel
Pinkston, a professor of international relations at the Seoul campus of
Troy University, says there are many positives that could come out of a
meeting between Moon and Kim, but he also warns that North Korea's
fundamental ambition of controlling the whole of the Korean Peninsula
has not changed.
"Anything that results in eliminating or
reducing the likelihood of kinetic attacks or violence on the peninsula
will be a good thing," he told DW. "But it appears that we are headed
into another cycle in which the North portrays itself as a reasonable,
pluralistic, democratic regime that is ready to communicate and
cooperate with the outside world before they revert to the principles of
a proletariat dictatorship."
Read more: Majority of South Koreans favor North Korea 'friendship'
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ICBM threat and North Korea's overall military strength
Major achievement
In
early June 2017, North Korea test-launched an intercontinental
ballistic missile (ICBM) for the first time. Testing an ICBM marked a
major military achievement for Pyongyang and a serious escalation of
tensions with the United States and its allies in the region,
particularly South Korea and Japan.
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