North and South Korea commit to ‘era of no war’

Posted by DanielS on Wednesday, 19 September 2018 07:54.

South Korean Presdient Moon Jae-in and Norht Korean leader Kim Jong Un after signing the agreement
North and South Korea commit to ‘era of no war

CNN, 19 Sept 2018:

Seoul, South Korea (CNN) North Korea said it would close a key missile test facility in the presence of “international experts” and potentially destroy its primary nuclear complex if the United States agrees to corresponding measures, South Korean President Moon Jae-in announced in a joint press conference with Kim Jong Un Wednesday.

The two leaders made the announcement on the second day of a three-day summit, their third this year, as part of efforts with the United States to contain the threat of war on the Korean Peninsula.

Speaking to the media Wednesday after a brief signing ceremony, Kim and Moon vowed to bring peace to the Korean Peninsula once and for all, something they first committed to at their April summit.

“The world is going to see how this divided nation is going to bring about a new future on its own,” Kim said to applause from those gathered.

Moon and Kim teased a potential historic fourth meeting between the two leaders, this time in the South Korean capital. The signed agreement stated that Kim would travel to Seoul “as soon as possible,” something no North Korean leader has ever done. Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, agreed to visit Seoul, but never followed through.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the Paekhwawon State Guesthouse in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this still frame taken from video taken September 19.

Both countries’ defense chiefs also signed a 17-page accord in which the two countries vowed to “cease all hostile acts against each other.”

“The era of no war has started,” said Moon, the first South Korean president to visit Pyongyang since 2007. “Today the North and South decided to remove all threats that can cause war from the entire Korean peninsula.”

The two countries also pledged to:

- Submit a joint bid to host the 2032 Summer Olympics.
- Create rail and road links between North and South within the next year.
- Stop military drills aimed at each other along the Military Demarcation Line, which divides the two countries, by November 1.
- Remove 11 guard posts in the demilitarized zone by the end of the year.
- Normalize the Kaesong Industrial complex and Kumgang tourism project as soon as the conditions allow.

The ball is in Washington’s court

In the agreement signed Wednesday, Pyongyang pledged to destroy both the Tongchang-ri missile engine test site and the Yongbyon nuclear site, which is believed to be used for the production of fissile material, if the United States takes reciprocal measures.

Analysts say the ball is now in Washington’s court.

It’s been more than three months since Kim met US President Donald Trump in Singapore, and negotiations between the two sides appear to have hit an impasse. Kim’s offer, however, could provide a way to jump start talks, analysts say.

“What the United States needs to be looking for right now are genuine steps from the North Koreans that indicate a willingness to move the process forward. If North Korea is genuinely willing to close down Yongbyon and to allow in inspectors ... those are just partial steps, but those are genuine steps forward,” said Michael Fuchs, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and former deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.

“The biggest outstanding question still remains—what price the North Koreans want to extract from the United States,” Fuchs said.
Shortly after the announcement, Trump called Wednesday’s developments “very exciting” on Twitter.

Kim Jong Un has agreed to allow Nuclear inspections, subject to final negotiations, and to permanently dismantle a test site and launch pad in the presence of international experts. In the meantime there will be no Rocket or Nuclear testing. Hero remains to continue being….....
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 19, 2018

....returned home to the United States. Also, North and South Korea will file a joint bid to host the 2032 Olympics. Very exciting!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 19, 2018

Standing side by side with Kim in Pyongyang, Moon expressed hope on Wednesday that talks would resume between North Korea and the US.

“They have continuously shown their trust towards one another and I hope there will be another summit between the two countries as soon as possible,” Moon said.

Moon’s spokesman, Yoon Young-chan, announced later in the day that the South Korean President would travel to the US to meet with Trump on September 24.

An end to the war

Moon and his top advisers have consistently said they want to make inter-Korea meetings a regular part of North-South relations and see them as a helpful step in establishing a permanent peace.

“Chairman Kim and I share the history of having held hands like lovers and crossed the Military Demarcation Line together twice,” Moon said during a toast at a banquet Tuesday evening.

“The fact that the leaders of Koreas can meet without limit in time or place symbolically demonstrates that a new age of inter-Korean relations has arrived,” he added.

Ahead of this week’s talks, it was expected that two leaders would continue to work to formally end to the Korean War, which ended in an armistice 65 years ago.

While a formal peace regime officially ending the Korean War would need buy in from the US and China—the other participants in the conflict—experts agree that there is nothing to stop the two Koreas declaring an end to the war themselves, or signing a bilateral peace treaty.

A big part of any negotiation to end the war would be the status of the thousands of US troops stationed in South Korea as part of the two countries’ alliance. The North has long seen the US military’s large footprint in South Korea as a direct threat.

Tags: Boundaries and Borders, Geopolitics, Military Matters, Political analysis, U.S. Politics, World Affairs

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Posted by N/S Korea concordance strengthens China on Mon, 24 Sep 2018 07:13 | #

South China Morning Post, “North, South Korea ease military tensions but how close are they to a nuclear-free peninsula?”

Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un are making diplomatic breakthroughs, but Ankit Panda questions the value of the latest concessions made by Pyongyang.

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 23 September, 2018, 8:00pm
UPDATED : Sunday, 23 September, 2018, 8:23pm

Diplomacy between North and South Korea continues apace in 2018, and the just-concluded fifth inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang underlines the remarkable depth and breadth of their engagement.

The most significant outcome of the latest meeting was the signing by their respective defence ministers of a deal to reduce military tension along the boundary separating the two countries. The agreement, which military delegations had been working on for months, included important provisions to manage and lower the pressure in the air, on land and at sea.

In the meantime, South Korean President Moon Jae-in has been true to his word on providing support for North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s economic transformation plans. Earlier this year, Kim adopted a new “strategic line” for his country in which he prioritised economic development and downplayed his nuclear arsenal.

North Korea’s Kim Jong-un lays out red carpet for Moon Jae-in on mission to save nuclear talks

A military parade earlier this month to celebrate the 70th anniversary of North Korea’s founding underlined this, with several economic floats calling for national development.

Accordingly, the September 19 Pyongyang Declaration agreed by the two leaders includes a promise to “pursue substantial measures to further advance exchanges and cooperation based on the spirit of mutual benefit and shared prosperity”.

The two sides are enthusiastically pushing ahead, even as South Korea’s ability to make good on many of its promises will be limited by the international sanctions in place against the North.

The fifth inter-Korean summit – the third between Moon and Kim this year – also saw the South Korean president serve as more of a direct mediator between the United States and North Korea than before. For Moon, while progress on inter-Korean issues was a critical impetus for the summit, revivifying the flagging US-North Korea diplomatic process was a greater priority in the weeks leading up to his latest encounter with Kim.

Fortunately for Moon, he left Pyongyang with a big win. The Pyongyang Declaration saw Kim offering up more specific concessions on his ballistic missile and nuclear programmes than he had done at either the June 12 summit with US President Donald Trump or his initial meeting with Moon at Panmunjom on April 27.

Key role for Moon in bringing peace to Korean peninsula

Unfortunately for the cause of North Korea’s disarmament, the concessions are highly limited in value. The promise to disassemble the ballistic missile engine test stand at Sohae, for example, had already been verbally agreed at the Singapore summit between Trump and Kim. Kim simply extended it to include the nearby satellite launch facility. While that was a welcome development, the language in the declaration suggested that international experts will be permitted only to observe the dismantlement – not inspect or verify what exactly North Korea does to disable the site.

Even with the site disabled, North Korea’s satellite programme could continue. The country’s northeastern satellite test facility, unused since 2009, could be reactivated, for instance. Alternatively, North Korea could transition towards using road-mobile satellite launchers, as China and Israel have done.

Finally, even though North Korea’s well-known Yongbyon nuclear complex makes an appearance in the latest Moon-Kim declaration, Pyongyang has made no promises about the facility. Instead, it may pursue concessions there if the United States follows through on its commitments under the June 12 agreement, including potentially a declaration to end the Korean war.

Whatever the reality of the concessions and their value, they have done the trick for Moon. The White House has responded positively and momentum is now in place to set up a second summit between Trump and Kim. North Korea is, of course, no closer to disarming itself of its nuclear weapons, but the cause of inter-Korean peace has seen great progress.

For regional states, including China, the summit outcome will be welcomed. Beijing has long supported denuclearisation of the peninsula, but will be happy for Kim to reduce the profile of his nuclear weapons and pursue economic development in tandem with Moon.

In the meantime, Moon’s path towards a peace treaty on the peninsula brings South Korea closer to a future where its alliance with the United States has to either end or be seriously recalibrated – another bonus for China.

In the end, it is undeniable that what Moon and Kim have achieved on the inter-Korean front – especially military-to-military measures – is greatly significant, but North Korea’s disarmament remains a distant goal. At the very least, Moon’s efforts will prevent an immediate collapse of the US-North Korea process, but Pyongyang and Washington are no closer to forging an understanding on the fundamental questions that divide them.

Ankit Panda is a senior editor at The Diplomat