There’s a dark purpose in Kim Jong Un’s proffered moratorium on nuclear and ballistic missile testing announced over the weekend. Kim, with the apparent complicity of South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in, seeks to eventually merge his state into the South – and drive out U.S. troops from the peninsula.
Most pundits thought Saturday’s nuclear announcement was aimed at President Donald Trump, ahead of the planned Kim-Trump summit in June. Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency quoted Kim Jong Un as saying his drive for nuclear weapons is “complete.” “We no longer need any nuclear tests, mid-range and intercontinental ballistic rocket tests,” he declared, adding that the nuclear test site in the northern area of his country has also “completed its mission.”
More likely, however, Kim’s intended audience is Moon Jae-in – hoping to help Moon take further steps toward eventual reunification with the North, ahead of the Friday talks with the South Korean at the Peace House, south of the Military Demarcation Line in Panmunjom, the Demilitarized Zone’s Truce Village. When Kim crosses that line, he will become the first North Korean leader to visit the South.
So what is the Kimster up to? The core goal of the Kims, ever since the founding of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in 1948, is the takeover of the Republic of Korea. In the North, that is called “final victory,” and it is a term Kim has been using with some frequency.
We should not be surprised if Kim thinks he is on the verge of an historic accomplishment. In Moon, Kim has a willing target. The South Korean leader, after all, has surrounded himself with North Korea’s most ardent advocates.
“Some of President Moon’s advisers were once members of the juchesasangpa, also known as the ‘jusapa,’ students and proponents of North Korea’s juche self-reliance ideology in South Korea,” said Greg Scarlatoiu, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea. “Naturally, youthful views do change, but being a proponent of juche goes beyond mere ideology to denying the very foundations and legitimacy of the Republic of Korea,” he told The Cipher Brief.
Im Jong-seok, Moon Jae-in’s chief of staff, was an “avid jusapa” and “still has not made clear whether he denounces that belief or not,” said Tara O, an adjunct fellow of Pacific Forum CSIS, in comments to The Cipher Brief.
It is those advisors who are now leading Moon’s effort to merge the South Korean state into the North Korean regime, at least into some form of loose confederation. To that end, Moon has been working to make the South’s constitution more compatible with the North’s.
“The constitutional reform that the Moon Jae-in government is spearheading is alarming,” Ms. O wrote to me. “The most dangerous, although it appears innocuous at initial glance, is the concept of decentralization, because it supports North Korea’s goal of Goryeo Federation, with a low-level federation as the initial step.”
To that end, Moon is pushing the concept of “grassroots democracy through autonomy,” which in practice would result in the creation of at least 243—the number of counties, cities, and provinces—local governments. Leftist activists could mimic the takeover by “a small number of Bolsheviks,” who seized power in Russia in 1919.
The new constitution would, if Moon gets his way, also provide that the capital of the Republic of Korea shall be determined by legislation.
“This implies the capital would be moved from Seoul,” Ms. O writes. Most assume the phrase prepares the way for a transfer to Sejong, the new “mini capital” located south of Seoul. Yet, this provision could also permit the designation of Pyongyang as the capital of a unified Korean state.
Finally, Moon’s Democratic Party wanted to remove the notion of “liberal” from the concept of “democratic” as South Korea’s “basic order” of government, O notes. The Kim regime maintains it is “democratic” but not liberal, so the change would harmonize the nature of the two Korean states. Moon’s party retreated from this constitutional change in the face of opposition, but Moon’s Ministry of Education in July 2017 deleted the concept of liberal democracy from textbooks, she writes.
While Moon is rushing through the constitutional changes, he is trying to formally end the Korean War. Many speculate he and Kim, when they meet Friday, will issue a statement declaring their intention to formally sign a treaty concluding the conflict. Fighting ended in July 1953 with an armistice, inked in Panmunjom, that South Korea refused to sign.
Normally a peace treaty is a positive development, but the Korean peninsula has its own logic. Moon Jae-in last Thursday said Kim Jong Un is not demanding the removal of American troops in return for giving up nuclear weapons, a significant concession, but it appears Moon himself is working to get them out of his country.
Moon in public says the right things about the South’s alliance with America, but he has undertaken actions fundamentally inconsistent with his obligations as a treaty partner.
In late October, for instance, his foreign ministry agreed with China on what is now known as the Three Nos: no additional batteries on South Korean soil of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-missile system; no South Korea participation in integrated missile defense; and no trilateral alliance with the U.S. and Japan.
The agreement with Beijing undermines the ability of American forces both on the peninsula and in the region to protect themselves against missile attack and was reached with no or virtually no consultation with Washington.
Moreover, Moon has created one obstacle after another to the continuation of the one THAAD battery in place in South Korea and, most disturbingly, allowed his advisors to publicly mischaracterize the structure of the U.S.-South Korea joint military command to inflame popular opinion against America.
Some South Koreans are, therefore, are not on board with Moon’s peace treaty initiative. The concern is that Moon will soon argue his country no longer needs America because the Korean War has been concluded.
“A peace treaty should be signed when conditions ensure actual peace,” cautioned a Saturday editorial titled “Haste Is Dangerous,” in the widely read Seoul newspaper, JoongAng Ilbo. “Let’s wait until North Korea is entirely disarmed of nuclear weapons and the South is safe from any military threat,” it advised.
Although Moon says a treaty should follow North Korea’s denuclearization, he seems far too willing to accept Kim Jong Un’s words on giving up his most destructive weapons. We should not be surprised if the South Korean president in the coming weeks urges the international community to trade Kim’s mere promises of disarmament in the future for financial assistance today.
“A great transition that can create a new world order in the world history is beginning to take shape,” Moon said, referring to Kim Jong Un’s upcoming summits with himself and Trump.
Only Moon knows what he had in mind when he spoke those words, but his actions over recent months are deeply disturbing. Both he and Kim are at this moment pursing bold initiatives, which means Trump, as a practical matter, is now facing off with two pro-North Korean leaders, one in Pyongyang and the other in Seoul.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of "The Coming Collapse of China" and "Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World."
