North Korean media have been , filled , with debate about what Donald Trump’s returning to power in the United States may mean for the Korean Peninsula.
The possibility that Trump did renew his romantic ties with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un will top the list as a result of a deal that failed at the Hanoi Summit in later February 2019.
Trump himself made speculative notes while campaigning. ” It’s good to get along when someone has a lot of atomic weapons or otherwise”, Trump , said , about Kim in July. ” He’d like to see me again, too. I think he misses me, if you want to hear the truth”.
The president-elect is expected to want to go back to the talks at some point, according to senior officials, including former Trump presidency officials who were present during his first term.
” It’s not a day one issue, probably not even a year one issue, but]Trump ] will certainly seek to re-engage with Kim Jong Un”, former Trump senior defense official Randall Schriver , said on November 21 at the Hudson Institute.
According to Schriver, talks may “have diverse contours than the first term, as well as the two summits in Singapore and Hanoi.” Trump may possibly make an offer to talk about a range of topics, including financial aid and the Korean War, which was a topic that was important in the first discussions.
The bottom line, however, is Trump’s own conviction that he came tantalizingly close to declaring he had forged serenity in Korea. ” President Trump was n’t happy that he did n’t get a deal”, said Schriver, who thinks the president-elect understands that the nuclear issue is an extraordinarily difficult one on which” to pry them away with diplomacy”.
Trump “is not repetitive and he is not constrained by convention”, Stephen Biegun, former assistant secretary of state and particular member for North Korea,  , told , the Korea Society lately.
” To the contrary, he is the guy who says,’ Are you kidding me? This war ended more than 70 years before, and we still have 30, 000 forces on the Vietnamese island? What illiterates have overseen our North Korean plan for the past 70 times? There is a sure protagonist common feeling in that study”.
Some experts see Trump’s statement that Alex Wong, who was a member of the Northern Asian negotiating team during the first management, had become his deputy national security advisor as proof of his desire to resume politics with Pyongyang.
” At multiple levels, this supports the thesis that Trump is hot to trot with Kim” , , said , a former senior US intelligence analyst with deep experience on North Korea. ” And, for better or worse, Pyongyang did read it that way”.
Both the North Korean government and the South Korean government, who were important participants in the negotiations conducted during the first administration, appear willing to return to that desk whatever the president may choose. ” It will be a very unique active than in the first term”, says Schriver, who was a part of the negotiating group for both Trump-Kim conferences.
The teachings of Hanoi
The location of the conversations that ended in 2019 will undoubtedly be the starting point for a new diplomatic exercise. Negotiations between the US and North Korea aimed to utilize the vague nuclear promise made the previous year at the Singapore Summit, but it eventually failed.
The North Koreans” thought the President was hungry for a bargain and they were going to save that for the leader-level meeting”, Biegun , told , the Arms Control Association in a 2021 meeting.
Trump arrived in Hanoi preoccupied with the domestic political climate, which was reflected in his impeachment proceedings and the pending evidence of Michael Cohen, his former prosecutor, in Congress. According to past National Security Advisor John Bolton ‘s , withering narrative, Trump was continually watching Fox News.
Bolton and others were pressured by Trump to not reach a” small deal” in order to prepare for the deals, contending that it would violate both the American Constitution and those of its allies, including Japan.
Kim made an offer to end the notorious nuclear complex’s closure in Yongbyon in exchange for lifting all of the UN Security Council’s financial sanctions, which essentially cover all of the most important trade and aid limitations.
The US team understood that this constituted a de facto , the elimination of all successful sanctions, and did not include any key facilities besides Yongbyon that would permit the continuation of the radioactive program. As has been recently , confirmed, this included a significant enrichment flower at Kangson.
Trump tried to contract, suggesting Kim take a significantly lesser reduction in sanctions, and therefore proposed eliminating North Korea’s long-range missile program, which may reach the continental United States, leaving alive shorter-range missiles that target South Korea and Japan.
” This was, beyond doubt, the worst time of the meeting”, Bolton wrote in his , narrative. ” If Kim Jong Un had said well that, they might have had a bargain, disastrously for America. Luckily, he was n’t cutting, saying he was getting everything, omitting any mention of the restrictions being lifted”.
Attempts to revive talks failed, including , an unexpected summit , a few months afterward, in June 2019, at the Demilitarized Zone.
Pointing fingers at Seoul
Was Trump and Kim resume Hanoi’s failed deals-making?
The shift in Seoul’s government has made a significant difference. Moon Jae-in’s liberal management had a significant influence on the engagement’s success, changing its tactics frequently when it stalled, and shaping the North Koreans ‘ dealing plan.
In fact, US negotiators criticized the Moon leadership for misinterpreting Trump’s willingness to reach the offer Kim proposed and for influencing its decision-making.
Evans Revere, a veteran of long-term diplomatic relations with North Korea, claims that Kim’s trust in Hanoi “was the result of the liberal ROK administration’s efforts to persuade Kim that the US would take this deal.”
Kim’s shame in Hanoi was caused by the false perception of success Seoul gave the North Koreans. Kim Jong Un’s anger on the return journey and venting his anger toward the ROK is unfathomable.
However, if Trump returns to the table in the near future, he will find a South Korean government that wo n’t encourage talks with North Korea. Relations between the two Koreas are at a lower level because the traditional leadership in Seoul has taken a harsh attitude toward North Korea.
In two years, nevertheless, there could be a change of government in Korea, shifting power back to the liberals.
According to Biegun, President Trump’s protagonist view that we need to solve this issue aligns with the conventional liberal view that concessions to North Korea are necessary to end the Korean Peninsula’s conflict and bring peace and reconciliation, according to Biegun. ” There will be an configuration it”.
Kim Is No Waiting for Trump
Kim’s lack of motivation to pursue this grand bargain may be the biggest problem to a successful Hanoi agreement. ” This is a Kim Jong Un that is in a different place”, Schriver told the Hudson Institute. ” He’s got more sophisticated features now”.
More considerably, he has the support of Putin and Russia and retains close ties to China. At the time of the conferences in Singapore and Hanoi, China and Russia were generally also enforcing the global sanctions regime. Both organizations have lifted Kim’s regime’s financial pressures and slowed any further UN sanctions.
” Weapons are now part of the government’s DNA and the North Koreans are making regular, impressive progress towards their goal of becoming a full-fledged nuclear energy”, argues Revere. ” The only’ deal’ that they , might , be prepared to discuss is one in which they would sit down with the US’ as one nuclear power with another ‘ , to discuss’ arms control.'”
Kim’s strength was demonstrated by the dispatch of more than 10,000 North Korean troops to the Ukrainian war front in recent significant speeches following the US election.
In a lengthy , address , delivered to army commanders on November 18, Kim linked the war in Europe to the situation on the Korean Peninsula and urged preparation for conflict. According to Kim,” The US-led military alliance is expanding its reach to Europe and the Asia-Pacific, and the spearhead of its aggression is being directed at our country, which is the closest country to the United States and has had the longest hostile relationship with it,” the alliance’s leader said.
In a , speech , delivered some days later at an arms expo in Pyongyang, Kim provided his “lessons of Hanoi”, offering only the co-existence of two nuclear states. Kim remarked,” We already tried everything in the bilateral negotiations with the United States, and what we ultimately believed was not the superpower’s will to coexist with us, but its unwaveringly aggressive and hostile policy toward the DPRK.”
In a , study  , published recently by the Middlebury Institute’s Center for Non-Proliferation Studies, Siegfried Hecker, former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Robert Carlin, a former intelligence specialist and negotiator with North Korea, offered this conclusion:
” The North’s new policy will not be in question at this point,” said one source. No mistake should be made: what we’ve seen since January 2022 is n’t Pyongyang’s “healing” strategy. It’s a tactical tactic. It has been a fundamental change from the previous 30 years, a result of a leadership decision made by Kim Jong Un that will have long-term effects on both the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia. That does n’t mean Pyongyang wo n’t re-engage with the United States, but it almost certainly will when it does, it will almost certainly open a door to a completely different room.
What would bring Kim back to the table for talks? A veteran North Korean intelligence analyst claims that “he is willing to surrender from Trump.” ” But he is not going to concede anything. He does n’t have to. It is the Americans who have to make the concessions”.
What might that entail? Simple acceptance of North Korea as a nuclear-weapon state, formalized in some kind of arms control agreement, may no longer be enough. Trump already had a demand for US troop withdrawal from South Korea on his agenda at the conclusion of his first term. The former intelligence officer told me,” If Kim can get those troops out of there, he will be perfectly content.” ” That is why it is so dangerous”.
For now, as Kim , wrote , to Trump in the last of his “beautiful” letters, sent on August 5, 2019,” We are in a different situation and we are not in a hurry”.
At Stanford University, Daniel Sneider is a non-resident distinguished fellow at the Korea Economic Institute of America and a lecturer on East Asian and international policy issues. This article was originally published by KEI’s The Peninsula, and it is now available for resale with permission.