Peace with Kim – the least bad option

Accepting Kim Jong-un's offer for nuclear disarmament may be naive, but it's the best option on the table.

Emily Hohler
By
published
in Features

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Kim: promising concessions
(Image credit: 2018 Getty Images)

Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, has offered to "permanently dismantle" his country's main nuclear site, but only if the US reciprocates, possibly by declaring a formal end to the 1950-1953 Korean War, says Choe Sang-Hun in The New York Times.

He offered the concession during a three-day summit in Pyongyang with the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in. The leaders also agreed to open rail links and jointly bid for the 2032 summer Olympics, says Benjamin Haas in The Guardian. Kim added that he would visit Seoul; a first for a North Korean leader.

Kim's offer may not amount to much, says Richard Lloyd Parry in The Times. Yes, "the dismantling of a missile testing site in front of international inspectors would be spectacular" but Kim has his missiles and "doesn't need the site any more". His promises about the Yongbyon facilities are "similarly ambiguous".

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Moon's embrace of Kim is causing "disquiet" within the US administration, among South Korean conservatives and in Japan, America's other ally, says Simon Denyer in The Washington Post. Moon's view is that it is "only by building trust" that Kim will be persuaded to denuclearise.

This contrasts sharply with the "maximum pressure" stance of the Trump administration, which is that Kim must take action before US largesse can "kick in". Moon's cheerleading efforts also "often sidestep the fact that Kim still leads the world's most repressive totalitarian regime".

Yet Trump, like Moon, also appears to be betting that the "corpulent dictator" is a reformist, says Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times. Last week he accepted an invitation to another summit with Kim, proclaiming on Twitter that they would "prove everyone wrong". Given the prospect of war between two nuclear-armed states just last year, it is no wonder that Moon is doing all he can. It may "be a nave, long-odds bet". But it is "preferable to the alternative."

Emily Hohler
Emily Hohler

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.

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