Moon wants to end the Korean War. Can it bring peace? | | Nuclear Weapons Issues

On the day North Korea The test has been removed its first round of the year, South Korean President Moon Jae-in was in the border town of Goseong, to attend a terrific railway event that he hopes will one day reconnect with the divided Korean island.

Expressing concern that the January 5 trial would jeopardize the disruption of relations between Korea, Moon assured his government that it would not hesitate to resume peace talks.

Only negotiations can “solve the problem”, the South Korean president said. “If all Koreans work together and promote trust, peace will prevail one day.”

Since taking office five years ago, Moon has struggled to deal with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. The two met three times in 2018, I promise declaring the Korean War – which did not end with a peace treaty, but a war in 1953 – at the end of the year.

But the request, along with talks on Pyongyang’s nuclear disarmament and relief measure on international sanctions, he stopped the following year, when a meeting between Kim and former United States President Donald Trump in Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi, ended.

From then on Kim refused it provides from Trump’s successor to resume negotiations without precedents.

In recent months, Moon, who is due to resign in May, has said he climbed efforts to restore peace, urge the US and China – both participants in the Korean War – to help them declare the conflict.

Speaking recently at the United Nations General Assembly, Moon said that if all major groups involved in the war “announce the end of the war, I believe we can move forward steadily in denuclearization and usher in a period of complete peace”.

This idea is supported by many South Koreans, but it has divided experts. Some say it could help resolve the embassy crisis on the Korean island, while others fear it could jeopardize South Korea’s security, as well as jeopardize the country’s security agreement with the United States.

‘Politics, a symbolic measure’

Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online.

Christine Ahn, head of the Women Cross DMZ human rights group, says the meetings between the leaders of the US, South Korea and North Korea in 2018 and 2019 led Kim to form a coalition. suspension on nuclear and remote weapons testing, and to release among the three American prisoners, a demining Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) regions separating the two Koreas, as well to meet again of separated families.

“It’s time to dump the power of the table,” Ahn said, noting that the final declaration of war is a “political, symbolic, and symbolic way” that would boost confidence and create a return to dialogue.

But for it to be effective, he says the announcement should be accompanied by “significant changes in US policy and the commitment of all parties to reduce hostility”. This could include measures such as lifting sanctions, retaliation for the US and South Korea exercise, as well as the promotion of the US travel ban in North Korea to allow reunification of families.

Ahn said signing the end of the war declaration would allow the ambassadors to “start working, pick up where the negotiations left off in Hanoi, and begin the process of setting a timeline for the supply of weapons”.

He adds that those who oppose such an announcement have not offered any possible alternatives.

“Just insisting that North Korea overcome the US demands to destroy nuclear weapons, I believe that more advanced measures will achieve these goals when there is no contradictory evidence, is not a solution,” he said.

The U.S. needs to reaffirm its commitment to promoting the peace of the month, with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan saying last October that Seoul and Washington “have different views on the movement or timing or conditions” of the treaty in question.

Washington has not commented on the move since South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong announced on December 29 that Seoul and Washington “had a good working relationship.”

South Korea’s foreign ministry also said earlier in the month that China supported what it was doing, quoting a Chinese official who said Beijing believed it would “help promote peace and security on the Korean island”.

Diplomatic fraud?

North Korea’s response, however, has so far been slow.

Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, called the request was “interesting and interesting” last year, but said things were not right because of Seoul’s “hateful” policies – with regard to economic sanctions and the annual US-South Korean events that Pyongyang called an attempted coup.

And Kim, instead New Year’s resolutions this year, he did not mention South Korea’s request.

Lee Sung-yoon, a North Korean professor at Fletcher School at Tufts University in the US, believes North Korea is “just showing no interest” because it has been pushing for an end to the war since the 1970s, when the US. signed a peace treaty to end the Vietnam War.

“North Korea is considering reducing and withdrawing US military aid from South Korea over time. And the end of military declarations is a step in the right direction, but it is an important part of that,” he said.

There are currently about 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, and the Moon government has said the final declaration of war will not undermine the two countries’ alliance. It also argues that the concept does not imply “legal reforms, reforms in the current war regime”, in addition to US-led representation. Law (UNC), a multinational force that helped defuse the North Korean invasion in 1953 and is now responsible for compelling war.

But Lee says the final declaration of war “could make the UNC illegal and should be abolished”, and questioned questions on the Korean Peninsula and the US over the need to suspend American troops in South Korea.

“The most beautiful example in North Korea is the January 1973 Paris Peace Accord which ended the Vietnam War and led the US to withdraw from South Vietnam,” Lee said. “It was called the peace treaty, the peace treaty, but there was a war after it, and the north united Vietnam, under Communist rule in 1975.”

He added: “So this is a clear, unambiguous, peaceable agreement between the two parties, as well as the parties to a peace agreement. Sometimes it is like a diplomatic canard, a way of finding differences, controlling, and gaining part in peaceful ways. “

‘Long Race’

For all South Korea’s positives and risks, its future is uncertain.

Only one five-year term will end in less than five months, and the race for the presidency is in full swing.

Lee Jae-myung, a spokesman for the Moon party, agrees with the plan, but his main enemy, Yoon Seok-yul, has denied the allegations, saying the end of the war could weaken the UNC and hamper their support for US troops. in South Korea.

And although Seoul claims to have been assisted by the US and China on the information they want, experts say there is no clear understanding of global events.

Bong Young-shik, a researcher at the Yonsei University Institute for North Korea Studies in Seoul, says the US and North Korea want different results from the declaration of war.

“For the United States, a declaration of legitimacy and legitimacy is likely to boost North Korea’s development by eliminating nuclear weapons. But this declaration has little to do with national progress,” he said.

“And in North Korea, the ratification of the treaty should bring significant benefits. North Korea’s main goal is to lift sanctions. But this is not the only South Korean government to do so.

“This has been a long time, a long shot from the beginning.”