now let's get a next verse take on the South korea-us summit and the ongoing
negotiations with North Korea over its denuclearization I'm joined in the
studio by James Kim research fellow at the asan Institute for Policy Studies
for his insights so this summit was seen as a critical opportunity for president
moon to try and reset the diplomacy between North Korea and the United
States do you think Thursday's meeting was successful in moving the needle at
all everything hinges on how North Korea saw this meeting whether or not they
think that there was any slight shift on the u.s. position
president Trump hinted at the possibility of multiple kinds of small
deals does North Korea take that as a bait for another round of negotiations
or or not but clearly on the issue of sanctions relief there wasn't any
movement there from the United States so so it's not clear to me at the moment
I think the key indicator is going to be whether North Korea takes any special
envoys coming from either South Korea to the United States to begin working level
discussions again and a new phrase seems to have popped up in recent weeks this
top-down approach that we've been hearing about do you think that's the
best way to go forward with these negotiations with North Korea speak to
the the people at the very top want that rather than having these working-level
meetings well in the popular media press that it hasn't been as emphasized as
much but when you go to Washington and talk with the expert community here this
has been sort of talked about when it comes to the North Korean issue clearly
hasn't been talked about when it comes to bilateral relations between u.s. and
South Korea because the working-level connections are fairly robust but on the
North Korean issue both countries have talked about this top-down approach on
North Korea and it really depends on a perspective here if you think that as
president Trump says that this is what is contributing to North Korea not
provocated since later part of 2017 and put a freeze on their tests and then
this is actually working and contributing but if if you go with some
of the critics on this that you know this is part of the reason why the Hanoi
talks failed then clearly it's not going to it's not making a big impact so I
think the perspective is somewhat important here and whether or not we're
going to see any results on the North Korean issue at the moment we're in the
middle of this we're not towards the end that were more likely towards the
beginning so let's see how North Korea responds and we know that presidents
moon and Trump met one-on-one at the White House for a couple of hours do you
think during that time president moon might have been pressing President Trump
to have a bit more flexibility and severe away from the hardline as the
Hawks within his administration who he listens to very carefully people like
John Bolton and to a lesser extent in a hawkish manner anyway Mike Pompeo do you
think he might have said look don't listen to those guys so much listen to
me I'm the one who's in the thick of it on the Korean Peninsula and do you think
he might have said to President Trump what do you think about sanctions relief
and perhaps some kind of multilateral summit in the future well and what we
know from the readouts before the summit and after the summit and the scheduling
seems to suggest that president moon has already had one-on-one sessions
individually with secretary Pompeyo National Security Adviser Bolton as well
as vice president pence so if he needed to talk to them about these matters he
could have spoken to them individually these are the people that are spending
more time with President Trump they have more access to his time and to his
availability so it's it's not clear to me that even if he made that statement
to President Trump that that would have had a lasting impact nonetheless he's
had that separate meeting with them and we also know that the National Security
Advisor deputy director Kim hyun-joong before the summit
announced that the issue of premature sanctions relief was not on the agenda
so it's probably not likely that that issue was raised though that question
was asked and president Trump answered very firmly there that this issue the
u.s. is not going to change his position on this issue so overall I think
president moon wanted to alais a lot of the concerns about coordination between
the u.s. and South Korea on the North Korean question and I think he's done
that to some extent so relatively some mixed results here from this summit to
allay some of the concerns having to do with the bilateral relationship between
u.s. and South Korea but at the same time on the North Korean issue it's not
clear how Kim drama and perceived this latest meeting and what she thinks
happens next then with this process do we expect a another moon kim summit
followed by perhaps a third summit between kim jong-un and president Trump
and then who knows this three-way summit that might include China or other people
another regional players I think both leaders basically agreed at this summit
that they want the talks to resume again and so they were there looking for
different ways to coax North Korea out of its shell but the critical thing here
is whether or not North Korea resumes working-level talks if these summits are
going to happen there needs to be some kind of a dialogue leading up to these
summits so look for a special envoy visit either to North Korea or some
other place involving both South Korean counterparts and and the US counterparts
if these summits are going to happen okay wonderful things very much for
coming in James we appreciate your insights as always and we hope to speak
to you soon perhaps when the next summit rolls around and that was James Kim
research fellow at the asan Institute for Policy Studies thank you thanks mark