Left Behind of Breakthrough

Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Republic of Korea agreed on having high-level governmental officers meeting at Panmunjom next Tuesday. It will be the first meeting these two years. These officers will discuss not only North Korea’s participation to Pyeongchang Winter Olympic next month, but improvement of their bilateral relations, which has been deteriorated by consecutive nuclear and missile tests of the North. It is likely that South Korea and United States will refrain from joint military exercise during the Olympic period.

The answer for offering a meeting from South Korea was sent from the Chairman of Committee for Peaceful Unification of Fatherland of North Korea, Ri Sonk-won, to South Korean Minister for Unification, Cho Myoung-gyon on Friday. The chairman and minister will be the heads of delegation from both sides. North Korea announced that they would welcome the effort of South Korea to improve North-South relations including participation to Olympic.

It is likely for both sides to discuss actual process of sending national team of North Korea to Pyeongchang and how to stay. North Korea is also going to request cooperative action of the South to halt joint military exercise with US or to refrain from dispatching US strategic fighter jets to the peninsula. It is possible that the North will refer to resumption of tourism project in Kumgansan, an ethnically symbolic mountain of the Koreans, or joint development of Kaesong industrial district.

South Korea will offer humanitarian support amounting to $8 million through an international organization, which Moon Jae-in administration has already announced. It is likely for the South to propose a meeting Red Cross of the both for discussing reunion project of separated families in both countries. South Korea and US has agreed on not having annual joint military exercise before the end of the Olympic. US Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, announced it, inviting speculation to postpone it after the birthday of Kim Il-sung, national father of North Korea, on April 15^th. It is considered in South Korea to shrink the scale of the joint exercise.

Shinzo Abe administration of Japan is not happy about abrupt breakthrough between the South and North. “The decision about the joint military exercise will not undermine the action to put stronger pressure on North Korea,” told Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yoshihide Suga. Suga insisted that there would be no change in the policy to put maximum pressure on the North. But expectation of the administration that US would not accept delay of the joint exercise was crushed. Abe administration has a trouble with Moon administration on comfort woman issue. Japan looks like excluded from the diplomatic movement over Korean Peninsula.