By Nur Ashikin Abdul Aziz
KUALA LUMPUR, July 9 (NNN-BERNAMA) — Bilateral talks between North Korea and the United States (US) still remains the best approach for the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula, after the collapse of the Six-Party Talks, said a former South Korean diplomat.
The former South Korean head of delegation to the Six-Party Talks, Chun Yung Woo said as North Korea believes the US alone has the bargaining chip that it values, other countries’ opinion will not matter in this issue.
“For North Korea no other country counts. US alone matters for North Korea because it believes the US alone has the ways and means to deny them what they want; survival or prosperity.
“They believe that other countries like China cannot protect North Korea as China has its own interest to protect,” the Chairman and Founder of the Korean Peninsula Future Forum told Bernama International News Service when met on the sidelines of the 33rd Asia Pacific Roundtable here, recently.
However, Chun did not fully dismiss the importance of multilateral efforts, saying that the now defunct Six-Party Talks was instrumental in making any US-North Korea agreement more credible, although it failed to prevent Pyongyang’s withdrawal from the talks.
The Six-Party Talks was a series of multilateral negotiations between North Korea, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the US from 2003 to dismantle North Korea’s nuclear programme. Hosted by China, the Six-Party Talks ended in 2009 after North Korea decided to no longer participate in the process.
Commenting on the two summits between the US and North Korea in Singapore in 2018 and Hanoi in 2019, he said although they have not produced concrete results, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un appeared to have the upper hand over President Donald Trump.
According to him, North Korea seemed to have gained more from the US in the Joint Declaration made in the Singapore Summit.
In the summit, the North Korean leader avoided the inclusion of CVID – or complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearisation, something that the US had been pushing for before the meet. Instead, he and the US president agreed on working towards complete denuclearisation.
Describing the two summits as a “getting to know process”, he said when the third summit occurs in the future, both sides would be more realistic and talk more on the sequence of how and when North Korea will denuclearise and how and when the US will deliver its promises on removal of sanctions.
The experienced negotiator said both sides should work on confidence building along the process of the implementation of the deal, and not before the deal.
He noted that rather than mutual trust, mutual interests will hold more importance in ensuring the success of any agreement.
“Even if confidence is a problem, it doesn’t stand in the way of the implementation of the agreement. Look at the case of the US and Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. The most important arms control agreement like ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty and Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) were concluded when mutual confidence was at its lowest,” he said.
Chun said Kim’s genuine intention to give up his nuclear arms should be tested in every direction and every way possible but believes the North Korean leader will have that genuine intention when “the price is right.”
He said if there is a way for North Korea to survive without abandoning its nuclear arsenal, it will never do so, but Kim’s ambition to defend his legitimacy as the North’s leader for life means that he needs more than just nuclear weapons.
“Kim understands that there is no future for North Korea if there is no economic development,” he said.
Describing Kim as “a great strategist of our time” who has outmaneuvered several world leaders so far, Chun said the 35-year-old leader will find it easier to give up his nuclear arsenal now as time is not on his side with biting international sanctions.
“I hope he’s smart enough to believe that it’s far more beneficial to give up nuclear arsenal now and believing in the possibility that he can build nuclear arsenal when necessary at a later date…that could be a more sensible strategy for him,” he said adding that Kim’s ‘love letter’ to Trump might just be the first step for that purpose.
But Chun who was a diplomat for 33 years, including as South Korea’s second vice foreign minister said that Trump and Kim must be flexible if they wanted to avoid coming out of the negotiations empty handed as they did in Hanoi in February this year.
He said it will be also best for Washington not to underestimate Kim, who he described as a “high risk, high return investor”.
The former member of the United Nations Missile Panel said Kim’s mistake was believing that he could outwit Trump again in Hanoi, but yet the North Korean has not lost any bargaining chip in any of his dealings so far.
“He (Kim) has never bet it wrong so far. A genius investor I would say. His father (Kim Jong-il) and grandfather (Kim Il-sung) were more careful…(but Kim Jong-un) is very skillful.”
He knew how to get a deal that he liked in Singapore, Chun added.
Chun, an ex national security advisor for former South Korean president Lee Myung-Bak, said that learning from his mistakes, the North Korean leader will be more careful in future talks and most probably adjust his offers to make it more palatable to Trump in the next round.
Edited by Shanti Ayadurai
–BERNAMA
