Ahead of Trump–Kim Summit, South Korea’s Moon Sends Conflicting Signals to US

U.S. President Donald Trump and South Korea's President Moon Jae-in attend a welcoming ceremony at the presidential Blue House in Seoul on Nov. 7, 2017. Kim Hong-Ji/AFP/Getty Images

As the world awaits the upcoming summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in has sent conflicting signals to the United States. Doubts have now been raised about whether Moon’s left-leaning administration is committed to keeping U.S. troops on the Korean Peninsula and supporting U.S. efforts to disarm a nuclearized Kim regime.

The controversy started on April 30 when Foreign Affairs magazine published an article by Moon Chung-in, a Yonsei University professor and a special adviser to the South Korean president on unification, foreign, and national security affairs, in which he wrote that U.S. military forces in South Korea would probably not be needed anymore once a peace treaty is signed.

The U.S. military presence is a highly sensitive topic both in terms of South Korea’s domestic politics and also its alliance with the United States. While a significant segment on the left of South Korea’s domestic politics desires a reduction or removal, President Moon Jae-in, who is from a left-leaning party, still publicly supports the stationing of U.S. troops in the country.

The uproar over the article was such that Moon Chung-in soon backtracked from the statement and said that he still supports the U.S. troop presence. South Korea’s Blue House also had to dispatch its national security adviser, Chung Eui-Yong, to the United States to meet with his U.S. counterpart, John Bolton, on May 4 and publicly reject the talk of a possible reduction of U.S. troops.

Chung’s visit, however, ironically coincided with a trip by Moon Chung-in to the United States. Despite insisting that he’s not speaking in any official capacity nor representing the Blue House’s views, Moon’s title of special adviser and the fact that he’s a close friend of President Moon Jae-in meant that his speeches in the United States were followed closely by Korean and international media.

At a May 4 forum at the Atlantic Council in Washington, Moon Chung-in again touted partisan rhetoric and warned that the responsibility is on Trump to make sure the upcoming meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un “works.”

“If President Trump does not make the summit successful, then inter-Korean relations will go back to its original position again,” said Moon Chung-in. “I hope the president [Trump] will make the summit successful, so that we can go together toward peace and stability and prosperity on the Korean Peninsula.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (L) and South Korean President Moon Jae-in (R) embrace after signing the Panmunjom Declaration during the Inter-Korean Summit at the Peace House on April 27 in Panmunjom, South Korea. Korea Summit Press Pool/Getty Images

Moon Chung-in’s remarks are in sharp contrast to South Korea’s official diplomatic stance, which supports the U.S. position that North Korea must commit to denuclearization first in order for a peace treaty to come to fruition.

“Peace and stability in East Asia depend on North Korea’s complete denuclearization. We hope that U.S.–North Korea summit will be a concrete step toward such aspiration,“ said Cho Yoon-je, ambassador of South Korea to the United States, on May 7 at an event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.