Two years after a failed attempt to make peace with the United States, North Korea announced that will restart nuclear testing and its long range missile program.
On June 12 2018 U.S. President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea met for the first time and signed an aspirational document. The core part said:
Convinced that the establishment of new U.S.-DPRK relations will contribute to the peace and prosperity of the Korean Peninsula and of the world, and recognizing that mutual confidence building can promote the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un state the following:
- The United States and the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] commit to establish new U.S.-DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
- The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
- Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work towards the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
- The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.
This was a freeze for freeze agreement which North Korea had long offered and which China had urged the U.S. and North Korea to accept:
The U.S. stops the large "strategic" maneuvers involving nuclear capable bombers flying from Guam, aircraft carriers and the like, while North Korea stops testing nukes and missiles. North Korea achieved its first aim. It can now lower its miliary posture and develop its economy.The situation is still somewhat unstable as both freeze steps are reversible.
The 'freeze for freeze' is, as the Chinese Foreign Minister envisioned, a starting point for a long series of talks which may finally lead to a peace agreement and some nuclear disarmament. Now comes the "dual-track approach" of a peace agreement in exchange for some disarmament "in a synchronized and reciprocal manner". This will be a "step-by-step" process which will take years or even decades.
The U.S. foreign policy borg went immediately to work to sabotage the deal. The Pentagon did not stop its common maneuvers with South Korea and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo constantly claimed that North Korea had promised to disarm without the U.S. doing anything on its side of the deal. It had never done so.
A second meeting between Trump and Kim in February 2019 failed:
The issue seems to have been the sequencing of abolishing sanctions by the U.S. side versus the destruction of the Yongbyon nuclear reactor complex on the North Korean side.The U.S. demanded the destruction of Yongbyon and of other complexes before any change in the sanction regime. North Korea insisted on following the sequencing that was agreed upon during the first summit. The joint statement by the two leaders signed in June 2018 defined four clearly sequenced steps.
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Eight month later new relations in form of the opening of embassies or a lifting of sanctions were not established. No peace treaty was signed. North Korea destroyed nuclear testing tunnels and a missile test stand. Some POW/MIA remains have been repatriated. But the U.S. side has taken no steps that could be seen as fulfilling its commitments.
Since the first summit Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. media have done their best to ignore the sequencing. North Korea on the other side has insisted on it again and again. It made absolutely clear that it would not budge on the issue.
Earlier this week North Korea broke off its communication with South Korea:
North Korea said on Tuesday that it would cut off all communication lines with South Korea, including military hotlines, as it vowed to reverse a recent détente on the Korean Peninsula and start treating the South as an “enemy.”
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Since Mr. Kim’s diplomacy with Mr. Trump collapsed, North Korea has stepped up pressure on the South to ignore Washington’s pressure and improve inter-Korean economic ties even before the North denuclearized. It demanded the reopening of the joint tourism venture at its Diamond Mountain resort complex and of a joint industrial park in Kaesong, both of which had served as key sources of cash until they were shut down in disputes between the two Koreas.
The New York Times has obviously adopted Pomeo's false claims as it does not even mention that North Korea never promised to denuclearize. It only promised to ' work towards the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula' as step three of the Singapore agreement under which the U.S. has to take the first two step .
Yesterday Foreign Minister Ri Son Gwon of North Korea published a long statement that lamented about the lost chances. It listed the things North Korea had done to fulfill its side of the agreement. It said that the U.S. hostility, expressed by sanctions, various maneuvers and nuclear bomber flights over South Korea, had never ended. It announced that its 'nuclear development' will now continue and that it will now work to 'build up a more reliable force'.
We can thereby expect new nuclear tests and new long range missile launches. As North Korea has fulfilled its part of the agreement while the U.S. renegaded on its parts, China will now again take sides. It will ignore all UN sanctions against North Korea and the North Korean lifeline to its big norther neighbor will reopen.
North Korea is likely to time the announced tests in a way that creates maximum damage for Trump's reelection campaign.
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