(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Kim Dong-hyun and Kim Ji-heon = As U.S. President Donald Trump sends dialogue messages to North Korea every day and even comes up with an appeasement measure of reducing joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States, attention is being paid to whether the North Korea-U.S. dialogue, which has been suspended since his first term, will gain momentum for resumption.
The government plans to coordinate related policies with the United States and strive to create conditions for dialogue with North Korea, including asking China's Wang Yi, director of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Foreign Affairs Office and Minister of Foreign Affairs, who will soon visit South Korea, to play a constructive role.
President Trump told reporters at the White House on the 17th (local time) that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un responded to his request for dialogue and that the dialogue was "very positive."
Following his announcement just the day before that he had ordered the Ministry of National Defense to cancel the joint military exercises because they could send inappropriate signals to North Korea, this time he hinted that some kind of message was exchanged with Chairman Kim. On the 15th, he posted a photo of the 2019 Panmunjom meeting with Chairman Kim on his social media.
In relation to this, there has been no public statement or response from North Korea yet, but speculation has been raised that President Trump may be starting to resume dialogue between North Korea and the United States in earnest as he continues to issue conciliatory messages toward North Korea.
In particular, the reduction of joint ROK-US training may be appealing to North Korea.
So far, North Korea has effectively proposed recognition of its status as a nuclear state and withdrawal of its hostile policy toward North Korea as conditions for dialogue with the U.S., but the ROK-U.S. joint military exercises are one of the hostile policies that North Korea has most opposed.
Accordingly, some in the domestic progressive camp have argued that joint training should be reduced, but it was a difficult plan for the South Korean government to propose to the United States first because it could lead to a weakening of deterrence against North Korea and is a politically sensitive issue.
The government has announced its position that it will make necessary diplomatic efforts as a 'pacemaker' to support the United States' peace efforts on the Korean Peninsula, and if the United States, which is one of the pillars of joint training, strongly insists on reducing training, it is expected to discuss reducing training with the United States as it is difficult to realistically stop it.
It has been reported that there has already been a move to cancel part of the joint outdoor training (FTX) after President Trump's order to scale back the 'Ulji Freedom Shield' (UFS) training, which began on the 17th.
It is of interest whether President Trump's reduction in joint training will be promoted in parallel with the multilateral discussions to end the war, which President Lee Jae-myung proposed in his Liberation Day celebration speech.
President Lee's proposal is evaluated as a plan to build a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula by having the parties involved, including South and North Korea, the United States, and China, end the Korean War, which effectively ended with the armistice agreement but was legally suspended.
Establishing a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula is one of the matters agreed upon in the joint statement issued by President Trump with Chairman Kim Jong-un in Singapore in 2018 during his first term, and President Trump reaffirmed his intention to implement the Singapore-North Korea summit joint statement in the joint fact sheet of the ROK-US summit announced with President Lee in November of last year.
Therefore, President Trump may not be reluctant to discuss the end of the war.
However, some in the United States are reluctant to give North Korea the 'gift' of an end to the war in the absence of corresponding denuclearization measures from North Korea.
In addition, multilateral war ending discussions require cooperation from China and may be influenced by the direction of U.S.-China relations, and President Trump tends to prefer bilateral negotiations over multilateral negotiations, which require a lot of time and coordination.
Meanwhile, as it seems likely that President Trump announced issues that could have a significant impact on the stability of the Korean Peninsula, such as reducing joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States, without prior consultation with the South Korean government, some are raising concerns that the United States may be unilaterally pursuing its policy toward North Korea.
Although it is said to be President Trump's style to suddenly announce major foreign policies through social media without sufficiently coordinating them with other countries as well as within the U.S. administration, this could ultimately lead to a lack of information sharing between Korea and the U.S. and the so-called "Korea passing."
Park Won-gon, a professor of North Korean studies at Ewha Womans University, said, “If ROK-US cooperation is not thorough in the process of North Korea-US dialogue, there is a high possibility that South Korea will be completely excluded. That is why ROK-US cooperation is very important.”
In relation to this, Park Doo-soon, spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a briefing that day, "We are maintaining close communication and cooperation (with the United States) on the overall policy toward North Korea, including efforts to resume dialogue." He added, "Our government hopes that President Trump's message will lead to meaningful dialogue between North Korea and the United States, and to this end, we plan to continue the necessary diplomatic efforts under close cooperation between South Korea and the United States."
In addition, President Trump said that there was a response from Chairman Kim Jong-un, but diplomatic sources reported that, as far as the South Korean government understands, there is currently no particular conversation taking place between North Korea and the United States.
An official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs met with reporters that day and said, "I don't think our government has anything to confirm about this," regarding communication between the leaders of North Korea and the United States.
If dialogue between the leaders or foreign ministers of the ROK and the U.S. takes place during the high-level session of the United Nations General Assembly to be held in New York in September, there may be an opportunity for high-level coordination of policies toward North Korea, such as reducing joint military exercises and discussing the end of the war.
The visit to Korea by Chinese Communist Party Central Foreign Affairs Office and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, scheduled for the 19th to 20th, is such an opportunity.
Foreign Minister Cho Hyun is expected to exchange opinions on the end-of-war discussions while requesting China's constructive role in relation to the North Korean nuclear issue.
In particular, the government is expected to request cooperation from both the U.S. and China so that the North Korean nuclear issue can be discussed in a constructive direction at the U.S.-China summit ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to the U.S. in September.
However, as China has recently reiterated its stance that there is no change in its existing policy on the Korean Peninsula and is reluctant to publicly discuss the North Korean nuclear issue, it is unclear how far China will go to resume dialogue with North Korea.
