Perizat RISBEK KIZI
South Korean President Moon Jae-in continues his active efforts to revive the Peace Initiative with North Korea. Thus, on Monday, the South Korea’s Unification Ministry called on the North Korea to start 2022 with steps towards dialogue and cooperation with Seoul. The ministry recalled that the North Korea are going to host the next plenum of the ruling Labour Party of Korea in the last decade of December, at which it is planned to discuss and decide on work plans for 2022.
Earlier on December 13, at a joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison in Canberra, South Korean President Moon said that North Korea and South Korea, the United States and China, in principle, agreed to declare an official end to the Korean War. Moreover, in September this year, in his speech at the UN General Assembly, Moon voiced his opinion on the need to declare an end to the war, expressing the hope that this would return North Korea to the negotiating table to discuss denuclearization and normalization of relations with the United States.
“Technically Unended War”
Even seven decades later, the two Koreas are technically still at war, as the Korean War (1950-53) ended with a ceasefire rather than a peace treaty. The armistice agreement between the US-led UN command, North Korea and China was a temporary arrangement to establish a ceasefire pending the signing of a peace agreement.
The idea of ending the war attracted attention in 2018 during a summit in Singapore between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, culminating President Moon’s peace initiative, which kicked off many diplomatic processes, including the US-North Korea dialogue on denuclearization and restoration of interstate relations between North and South Korea. However, the peaceful momentum proved short-lived after the failure of the second Trump-Kim summit in Vietnam in February 2019, highlighting the gaps in Washington and Pyongyang’s perception of the denuclearization issue.
Is peace possible?
The Washington Times writes that North Korea today poses a real threat to security, therefore, a declaration of peace would be an empty promise, which would not improve the security situation on the Korean Peninsula. Also, some sources note that there are signals that the United States and South Korea disagree with the declaration on an official end of war, even though they showed unity in public. According to the Lowy Institute, the United States wanted North Korea to make concrete denuclearization efforts before declaring an end to the war, while South Korea wanted to end the war first in order to resume negotiations and set a roadmap for future interactions. The Institute emphasizes that the United States is also concerned about the negative impact of the declaration on the cohesion of the US-South Korean alliance, whose raison d’être is to contain the North Korean invasion. There are fears that ending the Korean War will end the UN Command’s presence in South Korea, while North Korea is still building its nuclear arsenal.
Despite the abovementioned, many agree that a peace on the Korean Peninsula is necessary. Frank Aum, the senior expert on Northeast Asia at the U.S. Institute of Peace, says that declaring an end of war is a risk worth taking, as it could actually help strengthen the U.S.-South Korean relationship and even help achieve U.S. denuclearization goals. For example, according to him, the declaration could be drafted so that it is not binding on the Armistice Agreement or the UN command until a formal peace settlement is reached.
The motivation of the South Korea Peace Initiative
Many write that South Korea’s peace initiative is motivated by the evolving political situation in the country in the context of the upcoming presidential elections scheduled for March next year. However, it is worth emphasizing here that in the event of a victory of opposition candidates who are opposed to North Korea, there are high chances not only of freezing the peace initiative, but also nullifying the achievements on an interstate scale. Thus, for President Moon, the Declaration to End War is not a measure of securing his political legacy, as many argue, but the last opportunity to irreversibly set the direction of peace on the Korean Peninsula, as stipulated by the progressive political order he aspired to. throughout his political life. In this regard, the Moon administration views the end of the war as a catalyst for a paradigm shift that could change US-North Korea relations, inter-Korean relations and the environment on the Korean Peninsula from war and hostility to peace and cooperation.