Trump Message and Wang Yi's Visit to South Korea Speed Up Push for a Peace Regime on the Korean Peninsula

Moves to end the 73-year-old armistice regime on the Korean Peninsula, as proposed by President Lee Jae Myung in his Liberation Day speech, are now gathering pace. Soon after Lee declared an end to the armistice regime, U.S. President Donald Trump posted a photo of himself with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on his personal social networking service. He then ordered a reduction in the ROK-US Combined Military Exercise, Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS), on Aug. 16 local time. On Aug. 17, the Blue House said in response to Trump's SNS post mentioning his "good relationship" with Kim that "the government is paying close attention to President Trump's SNS message today." Moves by South Korea and the United States surrounding the Korean Peninsula are accelerating.
Talks on building a Korean Peninsula Peace Regime with China, a party to the 1953 Korean Armistice Agreement, are also expected to begin soon.
According to diplomatic sources, consultations on building a Korean Peninsula Peace Regime are expected to begin with Wang Yi, China's Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is due to visit South Korea in the coming days. After the summit between Lee and Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this year, the two sides have been coordinating follow-up discussions at the working level.
The South Korean government has been hoping for China's role in four-party talks involving South Korea, the United States, China and North Korea to advance the peace regime. Such talks are likely to take place during the APEC summit in Shenzhen, China, on Nov. 18-19.
China is also expected to support the government's push to end the armistice regime. If Kim Jong Un continues to avoid dialogue while advancing North Korea's nuclear weapons program, the United States plans to pursue sharing tactical nuclear weapons with its allies. From China's perspective, the sharing of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons with Japan and South Korea would be a major burden.
Moves by the ruling party and the government to support Lee's Korea policy are also picking up speed.
Minister of Unification Chung Dong-young is pushing to remove the phrase "main enemy" in reference to North Korea, alongside efforts to promote four-party talks. Kim Min-seok, a leading contender for the next leadership of the Democratic Party of Korea, also posted a photo of Trump and Kim Jong Un on his SNS on the same day. He said that if he becomes party leader, he will seek visits to the United States, China and Japan within the year and pursue bipartisan party diplomacy.
Lee and Trump, both politically cornered by falling approval ratings, are seeking change through a resolution of the North Korea nuclear issue. Trump is also facing the risk of impeachment if he loses the midterm elections later this year. However, with South Korea and the United States at odds over their interests and domestic disputes continuing between the pro-autonomy and pro-alliance camps, the confusion is likely to continue for some time.
The conservative opposition, meanwhile, is protesting the reduction in the ROK-US Combined Military Exercise and the change in wording regarding North Korea as the main enemy. It argued that Trump's unilateral order amounted to a security disaster that drastically scaled back the joint exercise. South Korea's military said it had not received advance notice from the U.S. military regarding Trump's remarks about reducing the drills.
Earlier, the South Korean and U.S. military authorities announced on Aug. 10 that they would reduce the number of field training exercises (FTX) conducted during UFS, which runs from Aug. 17 to 27, by eight from last year. The opposition also argued that Trump's order was not unrelated to the background of the recently stalled Korea-U.S. economic negotiations. The PPP claimed that "a few days ago, the U.S. side voiced blunt complaints over why investment in the United States was not moving forward properly, and in the midst of this, the situation escalated further when Yeo Han-koo, the chief negotiator for trade talks, was abruptly dismissed."
The PPP criticized the Lee administration, saying that "the root cause of President Trump's distorted view that Kim Jong Un's regime is 'not threatening and has respected the United States' lies in the Lee administration's submissive North Korea policy, which abandoned alliance trust and became fixated only on appeasing Pyongyang."
Meanwhile, the military said the UFS exercise that began on the day was being carried out normally and that there had been no request to adjust its scale.
[email protected] Kim Kyung-soo Reporter