Opinion | Yoon Suk-yeol ushers in the death of the North Korea Peace Regime

By Tom Fowdy

Four years ago come April, South Korean President Moon Jae-in met with his North Korean counterpart Kim Jong-un and commenced the historic Panmunjom Summit. The meeting was a declaration of peace on a divided Korean peninsula, one of which vowed to pave the way to ending the seven-decade-long Korean War itself. The meeting laid the foundations for something even more unprecedented, the meeting of Kim with U.S President Donald Trump in Singapore that summer, the first time the leader of the DPRK had ever met the President of the United States. The world was awash with optimism that a path to co-existence and normalization could be secured.

Now come 2022, the events of that year, and for that matter the Hanoi summit of the following January, have melted away into a murky grey false dawn. Not only did the talk of peace lead nowhere, but a deal failed to be secured concerning the DPRK's nuclear program, with Trump having walked out on Kim in Vietnam on having made demands Pyongyang deemed to be too zero-sum. But now, and much more pessimistically, the Moon Jae-in Presidency in Seoul is coming to an end. His successor? A hardline right-wing populist known as Yoon Suk-yeol, who advocates a tougher approach against the North, was elected on Wednesday.

Whilst commentators depict Yoon's election as the death kneel of Moon's peace legacy, North Korea had for all intents and purposes calculated it was already expired, and had long restarted long-range missile testing. But the failure of peace is not so much North Korea's doing as it is the deliberate intention of a politically spiteful Washington D.C who sought to obstruct Moon's vision, deliberately and intentionally blocking the path to inter-Korean cooperation through the utilization of unilateral sanctions, meaning Moon was left with meaningless gestures which could substantiate nothing. The United States also opposed the formal end of the Korean War, believing that it would threaten the legitimacy of its military presence on the peninsula.

Never has it been in their interest to allow North and South Korea to reconcile on their own terms. Thus, America aptly ensured that the Panmunjom declaration was little more than a piece of paper, one which will now be branded as a historical failure of hopes which never materialized. Having run down the rest of the clock on Moon's term, the US now has their man in Yoon Suk-yeol, who will champion not peace but antagonism towards the DPRK in conjunction with the US, whilst also taking a tougher position against China and forfeiting the "strategic ambiguity" of his predecessor in his dealings with Beijing. This sets the stage for a new confrontation with North Korea, and to a lesser extent, China.

Yesterday, American intelligence effectively accused North Korea of having tested intercontinental ballistic missiles under the guise of a reconnaissance satellite, effectively ending their self-imposed pause on the testing of such technology declared in 2018. Pyongyang has made no secret of their goal to test more, albeit again under the guise of satellites which utilize the same atmospheric re-entry technology, a key area experts have long understood they need to perfect in order to consolidate their longstanding strategic goal of gaining an ICBM capability of hitting the United States, in order to strategically secure a deterrence against Washington and force them to negotiate on their own terms. Pyongyang is also in the process of creating hypersonic missiles, as well as submarine launch capabilities.

It is quite obvious that the United States will respond to the situation by attempting to impose more sanctions on North Korea, but this will fail for a number of reasons. First of all, the DPRK has shown itself willing to voluntarily cut off its entire economic ties with the outside world (as it did during the pandemic) and not blink, even if it causes their population to suffer. This affirms part of the Juche or "self-mastery" ideology of engaging in long-term struggle against circumstances in order to achieve things on their own terms, placing maximum emphasis on sovereignty. The US has placed ever-growing sanctions on Pyongyang for 16 years and it has changed absolutely nothing. Thirdly, the US and South Korea are underestimating the international context. China and Russia will be less willing to cooperate with Washington on new sanctions owing to geopolitical tensions, this increases Pyongyang's own leverage over all sides.

These circumstances set up the Biden administration and Yoon Suk-yeol for almost certain failure, unless they are prepared to negotiate on terms favorable to Pyongyang and meet halfway. North Korea appears erratic and is misunderstood by the world, but it is in practice very well calculated and will continue to respond to this new context with an amplification of testing in order to maximize their capabilities as fast as possible and strengthen their hand. Moon Jae-in understood this well, and those who have killed his legacy of peace in the belief antagonism against North Korea can prevail are horribly wrong. Thus throughout 2022, we should expect Kim Jong-un to effectively double down on his long-held goal of completing an ICBM capability, and owing to the geopolitical environment effectively get away with it.

The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.

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