US Antipathy to Inter-Korean Rapprochement and Russia’s Role in Conflict Prevention
Thanks to the “New Year’s” initiatives of Kim Jong-un – to which South Korean Moon Jae-in responded for his own reasons – significant progress was made in the inter-Korean dialogue at the highest level during the recent Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang (the possibility of an inter-Korean summit is even on the table), although the main achievements thus far have been in terms of good PR rather than concrete agreements...
... since, for security reasons, Kim Jong-un cannot travel to the South and he hardly wants to travel to China, and because holding a third successive summit in North Korea is fraught with political costs for the South Korean leader.
1
. G. Toloraya. The Republic of Korea. Moscow: Mysl, 1990, p. 44.
2
. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Moscow: Nauka, 1985, pp. 260–262; Nodon sinmun, Pyongyang, 7.4.1993.
... lifting some of the current anti-Pyongyang sanctions.
www.mda.mil
Vasily Kashin:
Russia and China Respond to THAAD
Negotiations are the only way to ease tensions in the Korean Peninsula. North Korea needs to be a party to such negotiations, so the refusal by the U.S. and its allies to conduct talks with North Korea appears strange, to say the least. The approach towards Pyongyang cannot be all about the whip; North Korea needs to be offered the carrot as well.
Washington and Seoul should also assess ...
