South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un last week held a summit on the North-South border and announced the Panmunjom Declaration.
Although the declaration covers issues such as ending the Korean War, unification and scrapping nuclear weapons, it does not contain much political content, so when the show is over, things will probably continue much as before.
On the issue of ending the war, the two sides declared that they would “completely cease all hostile acts ... that are the source of military tension and conflict.”
Specifically, they said they would “take various military measures to ensure active mutual cooperation” and “hold frequent meetings between military authorities, including the defense ministers meeting.”
Although they pledged to “declare an end to the war ... and establish a peace regime” this year, they also recognized the need to “actively pursue trilateral meetings involving the two Koreas and the US, or quadrilateral meetings” with the addition of China.
This shows that formally ending the war is not something that the two sides can achieve between them.
With respect to unification, the declaration says: “South and North Korea affirmed the principle of determining the destiny of the Korean nation on their own accord.”
The wording is hardly different from the 2007 Declaration on the Advancement of South-North Korean Relations, Peace and Prosperity, which says: “The South and the North have agreed to resolve the issue of unification on their own initiative.”
Although the declaration proposes to “establish a joint liaison office with resident representatives ... in the Gaeseong region,” there is nothing about establishing representative offices, which would be a move toward mutual recognition.
It also says nothing about, for example, what should be done about reparations for the Pacific War and Korean War, or who should pay them.
In comparison, the North-South Joint Declaration that then-North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and then-South Korean president Kim Dae-jung signed following their summit in 2000 was more concrete, since it talked about the political structure that would follow unification, with the South suggesting forming a “confederation,” while the North proposed a “loose form of confederation.”
The latest declaration talks even less about the pressing issue of nuclear weapons.
On April 21, the North said it would cease atomic bomb tests, demolish its nuclear weapons test facilities and halt missile tests.
On Jan. 20, 1992, representatives of North and South Korea signed the Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, in which they promised not to “test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons,” to “establish ... a South-North Joint Nuclear Control Commision.”
In comparison, the Panmunjom Declaration is clearly a step backward.
The proposed “complete denuclearization” merely relies on the two sides “carry[ing] out their respective roles and responsibilities” — empty words that leave room for reneging.
In the 1990s, North Korea started working to develop nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
When Kim Jong-un came to power in 2012, he sped up research and development. It was only after creating a new “status quo” that he sought to gain a reputation for making concessions.
Through the Panmunjom Declaration, Moon has allowed Kim Jong-un to win booty at no cost. Now people must wait to see what US President Donald Trump does next.
HoonTing is a political commentator.
Translated by Julian Clegg
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs