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Kim Jong Un continues to make headlines as the first inter-Korean summit in 11 years is slated for Friday. In actuality, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has never been too far away from being the world focus and a concern to multiple major powers over the past nearly 70 years.
The DPRK and the Republic of Korea (ROK) announced late last month the decision to hold the landmark meeting in the truce village of Panmunjom inside the Demilitarized Zone. Pyongyang's overtures have budded since the first day of 2018, when the DPRK's top leader expressed in his New Year speech his willingness to send a delegation to the PyeongChang Winter Olympics and offer talks with the ROK to quench military tensions. With increasingly frequent interactions thereafter, the two sides are mending their fences at a thundering speed.
It seems that the rapprochement all started with Kim's sports diplomacy. There are lingering doubts over whether he will secure more success than his late father Kim Jong Il, who engaged in two summits before, which, however, ultimately made little headway.
The maiden South-North summit took place in 2000 when then ROK president Kim Dae-jung, an advocate of engaging the DPRK with his Sunshine policy, met with Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang. They clinched a peace declaration and reached consensus on economic cooperation.
When the liberal Roh Moo-Hyun assumed office in 2003, he carried forward the engagement policy and crossed the border to make the second meeting happen in 2007. The Roh-Kim summit was deemed fruitful with an eight-point pact, including a peace pledge and the establishment of the Kaesong Industrial Economic zone. Nonetheless, the rosy hours turned out to be a flash in the pan, after conservative presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-Hye geared toward a hardline DPRK policy and Pyongyang conducted nuclear and missile tests.
Will the third summit strike a breakthrough and bring a permanent end to the decades-long stalemate on the Korean Peninsula?
In actuality, “the young Kim has presented his intelligence and confidence well beyond his years,” Wang Chong, a senior research fellow of the Charhar Institute, told CGTN. Kim has played his cards at the right time and forged ahead with resolve. He saw the signs to foster a détente with Seoul and the US, and also recognized the irreversible trend of globalization. That was why, in an astonishing move, he declared a moratorium on nuclear and ballistic missile tests and a shift to reform and opening up.
Over the past 12 years, the United Nations imposed eight rounds of sanctions on the DPRK over its nuclear weapons program. The penalties expanded from an export ban of military supplies and luxury goods to capping oil exports, prohibiting textile products, suspending overseas joint ventures and ceasing overseas labor contracts. Lifting the sanctions constitutes the first step in boosting the DPRK’s economy and improving its people’s wellbeing.
There's also a US factor. Donald Trump’s unconventional policy toward Pyongyang, diverting from his predecessor Barack Obama's "strategic patience," has brought the DPRK to the negotiating table on an equal footing with the US.
And incumbent ROK President Moon Jae-in has been playing an intermediary role between Washington and Pyongyang through brisk shuttle diplomacy. Moon once said he would like to be remembered as a leader "who built a peaceful relationship between the North and South." His revival of the Sunshine policy has precipitated the bilateral thaw.
Moreover, Beijing has been committed to building up peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula with a dual-track approach followed by a "double suspension" proposal on various bilateral and multilateral occasions. Without its moral and economic support all these years, the summit day would not have come so soon, according to Wang Chong.
The third summit approaches at the right time when the four key parties involved in the Korean Peninsula have reached unprecedented consensus on working toward regional peace.
With all these ripe conditions, it’s expected that the third summit will see more successful outcomes than the first two meetings.
Separated families in the Korean War will likely enjoy reunions in the near future. Inter-Korean exchanges in economy, culture and tourism will surely be boosted. The ill-fated Kaesong Industrial Economic complex is anticipated to restart, creating more jobs and revving up business collaboration between both sides. More importantly, Kim’s opening-up vow will help connect China’s Belt and Road Initiative to the ROK through a transportation artery across Northeast Asia.
Peace on the Korean Peninsula is crucial to regional and world peace. “The upcoming summit will help create an effective peace-building and risk-control mechanism among the two Koreas, China and the US,” noted Wang Chong. It is believed that under the auspices of the mechanism, Northeast Asian nations will prosper.
Though an immediate conversion from armistice to a peace treaty may not happen at the summit, the high-level talks serve a good purpose in themselves. It’s fair to say that Kim, through a whirlwind of diplomatic maneuvers, brought the Korean Peninsula back from the brink of a nuclear war to opening a dialogue of peace with vested members in the region, all in the span of four months.
The author is a reporter for CGTN Digital.
Source: CGTN