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North Koreans celebrate New Year’s Eve at Kim Il-sung Square in Pyongyang on Dec. 31. (Yonhap News)
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Calls on South to not engage in joint military exercises with US
During his New Year’s address on Jan. 1, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un proposed multilateral negotiations to replace the armistice arrangement with a peace regime while also expressing his strong commitment to building a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. In regard to South Korea, Kim said that the agreements reached during the inter-Korean summits last year effectively constituted “a declaration of nonaggression” and called on the South to play an active role and to not agree to joint military exercises with the US. The apparent message is that Kim means to guarantee the security of his regime by working with South Korea to ease military tensions and by holding peace talks with the countries around the Korean Peninsula while the denuclearization talks with the US continue. Kim’s remarks about multilateral negotiations were part of his positive assessment of the relaxation of military tensions and the outcome of the inter-Korean summits held last year. The fact that this came before the part of Kim’s speech about the North Korea-US denuclearization negotiations shows that Kim’s attitude differs from the US, which regards the establishment of a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula as the result of the denuclearization negotiations. Kim can be seen as hinting that he intends to push forward with creating a peace regime and improving inter-Korean relations simultaneously with denuclearization, allowing the three to function as a virtuous cycle. Proposal includes China’s participation in peace process Kim’s proposal for multilateral negotiations are in line with South and North Korea’s agreement in the Apr. 27 Panmunjom Declaration to “actively pursue trilateral meetings involving the two Koreas and the United States, or quadrilateral meetings involving the two Koreas, the United States and China with a view to declaring an end to the war, converting the armistice agreement to a peace treaty and establishing a permanent and solid peace regime [. . .] during this year that marks the 65th anniversary of the Armistice.” In apparent recognition of the fact that pushing too hard for the end-of-war declaration last year actually functioned as an obstacle to the North Korea-US denuclearization negotiations, this proposal appears aimed at moving into peace talks that would include the end-of-war declaration. Kim stated that the multilateral negotiations would be conducted by the parties of the armistice agreement. This apparently assumes that China will participate in the larger process of the peace talks, which can be seen as an attempt to counter the US while giving a nod to China, which has vowed to play a constructive role in changes on the Korean Peninsula. “’Multilateral’ appears to have been used to substitute for the terms ‘trilateral’ and ‘quadrilateral,’ which appear in reference to the end-of-war declaration and conclusion of a peace treaty,” said a former senior official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Kim called on South Korea to play a responsible role in the process of building a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula: “South Korea must not allow any more joint military exercises with foreign powers and it must completely stop allowing strategic assets and other weapons of war to be brought to the peninsula from the outside.” Treating inter-Korean relations as a safety valve places pressure on Moon administration South and the US suspended the Ulchi-Freedom Guardian and Vigilant Ace joint exercises last year and have also refrained from bringing strategic assets onto the peninsula. They are also deliberating ways to reduce the scale of the Foal Eagle exercises, large-scale field mobility exercises scheduled for the first half of this year. The apparent reason that Kim nevertheless called for South Korea to halt its joint exercises with the US and to ban the movement of strategic assets was to emphasize that the South needs to ensure that the US does not resume the joint exercises while the denuclearization negotiations are ongoing. Treating inter-Korean relations as a sort of safety valve places considerable pressure on the administration of South Korean President Moon Jae-in. But Kim concluded by describing these requests as an “argument” without defining them as a precondition or “red line” for inter-Korean relations. “The Panmunjom Declaration, the Pyongyang Joint Declaration and the Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA) are effectively a declaration of nonaggression, a statement that North and South Korea will end their fratricidal conflict and use of force,” Kim said. This shows that Kim regards the CMA as an irreversible measure that prevents the threat of unplanned war on the Korean Peninsula. “As already agreed, North and South Korea must continue taking proactive and practical steps to extend the resolution of military hostility at the point of confrontation across the entire Korean Peninsula, including the ground, the sky and the sea,” Kim emphasized. This appears to indicate Kim’s commitment to expanding the military confidence-building measures that have centered on the demilitarized zone to the establishment of a “peace zone” in the West Sea and to moving into a meaningful stage of arms control. By Yoo Kang-moon, senior staff writer Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]
