North Korea's Leader Kim Jong-un Says He'll Give Up Weapons if US Promises Not to Invade (nytimes.com)

Several readers have shared a report: North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, told President Moon Jae-in of South Korea when they met that he would abandon his nuclear weapons if the United States would agree to formally end the Korean War and promise that it would not invade his country, a South Korean government spokesman said Sunday. In a faith-building gesture ahead of a summit meeting with President Trump, Mr. Kim also said he would invite experts and journalists from South Korea and the United States to watch the shutdown next month of his country's only known underground nuclear test site.

The comments by Mr. Kim were made on Friday when the leaders of the two Koreas met at Panmunjom, a village on their shared border, the spokesman, Yoon Young-chan, said on Sunday, providing additional details of the meeting. "I know the Americans are inherently disposed against us, but when they talk with us, they will see that I am not the kind of person who would shoot nuclear weapons to the south, over the Pacific or at the United States," Mr. Kim told Mr. Moon, according to Mr. Yoon's account of the meeting. It was another dramatically conciliatory statement by Mr. Kim, whose country threatened to do exactly those things during the height of nuclear tensions last year.

Comments

pinky swear

[mschoolbus]

Yea, sure, we promise.

Re:pinky swear

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not familiar with the details beyond the occasional headline, but it sure looks like one or both of these things has happened:

1) Kim Jong-un did not inherit his father's insanity; he was merely raised within it's influence. Now that he has been on his own for a while, he is actually sane enough to listen to some reasonable advisers and shake off the nonsense his father imposed. He is grasping the big picture; including the nature of the global economy and how his country desperately needs to get on board if it is going to have a future (which requires playing nice).

2) Something, possibly Trump, possibly waning support from China, has him scared shitless.

Re:pinky swear

[Anonymous Coward]

Or 3) It's a trap!

Re:pinky swear

[JoshuaZ]

You would think Ukraine and Libya would be lessons about what giving up weaponry for promises is worth.

Re:pinky swear

[Junta]

1) Is contra-indicated by his behavior up until this year. Reportedly in some ways he was even more ruthless than his father. His rhetoric was even more aggressive.

2) More likely this, specifically the aftermath of the nuclear test site collapse seemed to be a key turning point. Not only would this have likely set back their program, perhaps beyond recovery, it also demonstrated how much damage their messing around could do to the geology, right on China's border.After that point, everything toned downed rapidly. A few weeks ago he suddenly was willing to meet.
  Then a couple of weeks ago, presumable at China's insistance, Kim Jong Un went to Beijing. We are note privy to what happened in that meeting, but afterward, NK was much more concrete about terms to wind things down, though the general overtures were promising prior to that.

Trump's rhetoric *probably* wasn't it, perhaps the elevated sanctions contributed, but I suspect if not for the test site incident, they'd still be betting on threat of force by nukes to keep things going until they'd control South Korea on their terms. Now it seems they've decided to appease the international community in exchange for guarantees their internal affairs would be left alone (which the rest of the world has already seemed content to leave alone, regardless of severity of atrocity).

Re:pinky swear

[gilgongo]

"specifically the aftermath of the nuclear test site collapse seemed to be a key turning point"

Yes, although China had quietly and quite suddenly pulled the plug on them a couple of months prior to the collapse by reducing amongs other things their gasoline exports by 97%.

China's action is thought to have prompted Kim's trip to Beijing, where he was perhaps told how things would now play out by his only ally and provider of the vast majority of his foreign trade. So much for self reliance then.

Whether Trump had anything much to do with this is... Doubtful.

Re:pinky swear

[alvinrod]

Kim Jong Un could still be quite insane and it seems he at least learned enough of the regular saber-rattling technique from his old man to keep up appearances, but I think that he just ran into someone who was even more unhinged. Someone like a U.S. president that constantly shit talks everyone and anyone on twitter, constantly opens his mouth to invite even more legal trouble that wouldn't exist if he'd just shut up, and who seems to have no problem changing his mind about something mid-sentence.

Kim was like the deranged homeless guy that everyone wanted to stay away from and so people would just let him rummage through their dumpsters because no one really wants to confront the guy for fear of what might happen, and to some degree that homeless guy probably drums up the act a bit because he knows that this works. However, Trump is like a new homeless dude that's caked in mud and smells like piss that's screaming about god or the government that even the other homeless people don't want to fuck with because even they're a little bit worried about what this crazy mother fucker is going to do.

Trump kind of terrifies everyone else because they aren't quite sure how he'll act or behave and most other political leaders really don't want someone to introduce enough chaos that it causes their own gravy train to come crashing down as well. Trump is the new crazy man that the rest of the world leaders will seek to appease because even thought it means giving in a little, it seems to be less painful than what might happen if he doesn't get his way.

Some people want to argue that all of this is somehow brilliant political maneuvering on Trump's part, but that's being far, far too gracious. He may not be the type of complete idiot that much of the media would like to portray him as, but that doesn't make him some kind of chess master playing a highly skilled game that leaves his opponents caught in any number of clever snares. I think it's more of an idiot hero trope comparison where's he's so far out of his league that he's outmaneuvering opponents who were expecting a second best duelist instead of someone who looks like him might stab himself at any given moment.

Re:pinky swear

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's what I was thinking too. Maybe Sun-Tzu's art of War. Feign weakness when you are strong, and feign strength when you are weak.

Re:pinky swear

[gman003]

I have a suspicion, based on not much beyond "what would *I* do in his place?" contemplations.

Had Kim attempted to negotiate peace at the start of his rule, it likely would have resulted in a coup attempt. Peace is almost certainly going to ruin a lot of NK's "aristocracy" - the generals and the others who aren't at the top, but are still higher than everyone else. They'd be willing to kill to keep the power and wealth they have.

So Kim had to make his rule unquestioned. He's purged plenty of people, presumably those who'd be positioned to fight over it. He had some family murdered to keep them from even potentially being puppet replacements. And he's done plenty of internal propaganda about their nukes and missiles so the peasants and soldiers will see this as a negotiation from a place of strength, not a surrender.

Not only that, but dictators don't often retire peacefully. You die in office, of old age (if you're lucky) or to assassins, rebels or a foreign army (if you're not). And living in fear of peasant revolt or American drone strikes doesn't seem like a good way to live, to me. But if he negotiates peace, he gets to keep basically all his money, and then goes down in the history books as a generous, benevolent peacemaker.

Is this what happened? Maybe. We don't know, maybe never really will. But it's not impossible.

Re: pinky swear

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry. We've got the world best negotiator on our side! Really, really great. Many are saying he's the best the world has ever seen!

Re:pinky swear

[apoc.famine]

I think it's plausible.

Kim was educated in Switzerland. That's a thriving, educated, wealthy country, and it has access to everything the world has to offer. Going from there back to North Korea must have really been eye-opening. Sure, Kim gets what he wants because his family sucks the wealth out of the country, but other than the rest of the aristocracy, nobody really has anything. It's a poor, poor country, where famine can kill hundreds of thousands in a given year. Anywhere he goes outside of his curated estate he sees abject poverty.

I wouldn't be surprised if one factor is that he realizes that making everyone in North Korea 2x as wealthy will make him 100x as wealthy. That making life better for the peasants will make him more of a god than he already is. It only makes sense - the cult of personality is well established. Make life better for people, and you cement a legitimate place in history as a great leader.

If China said "not supporting any of your crazy military plans", I think Plan B is enrich the country, so those at the top can benefit even more. Yes, probably needed to consolidate power before doing that. He's now got power, a bargaining chip in a robust nuclear and missile program, and it's time to both become richer and more beloved. It's a solid plan.

Re: pinky swear

[Nidi62]

If NK can get the US to agree not to invade and officially end the war with SK, there is a non-zero chance that Trump will pull all the US troops out of South Korea ("the war is over, why should we spend billions on troops over there? "). With the US out of South Korea China's position in Asia strengthens considerably. China is playing the long game here and Trump will prpbably fall right in line. And dont forget, the US is always one drunken rape away from getting kicked out of Japan. If fhat were to happen too, the US would essentially loose all geopolitical influence in Asia.

Re: pinky swear

[dcw3]

With China building their own little islands and claiming territory that doesn't belong to them, plenty of SE Asian nations still want Uncle Sam keeping the sea lanes open.

As for Trump pulling troops out of ROK, there's really not that many to pull...~23k, and many of those aren't combat troops. We had a lot more when I lived there back in the 80s and early 90s (peaking at ~45k), but even then USFK forces were really just to show the NK govt. that attacking the ROK would also be an attack on us. For comparison, look at Germany. We're more than 25 years post Cold War, and we still have around 34k there.

Remember Gaddafi

[StandardCell]

The vendetta against Gaddafi after he had capitulated to giving up his nuclear weapons program is the primary reason NK hasn't given up its weapons program.

It will probably take the withdrawl of US forces from SK and aid to NK, and the formal acknowledgment of the continuation of the current NK regime in order to denuclearize NK. Even then, I wouldn't be certain they don't retain an actual nuke or two secretly now that they have them. This still probably won't address the effectively bigger threat of all of the NK artillery pointed at SK.

Re:Remember Gaddafi

[Solandri]

The Korean War was a UN police action, like the first Gulf War when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Taiwan held China's vote in the UN Security Council at the time, and the USSR was boycotting the UN that week so wasn't present to veto the UN Security Council authorization to intervene in Korea to counter North Korea's invasion. (North Korea concocted the fantasy that the South invaded the North, though enough time has passed that the vast majority of its population has been taught this as truth.)

The U.S. troops in South Korea number fewer than 24,000, vs North Korea's standing army of 1.2 million (4th largest in the world), and would be inconsequential in any hypothetical invasion of North Korea. The U.S. troops are present for one simple reason - to be overrun and die if North Korea should invade again, thereby giving the U.S. an excuse to intervene on South Korea's behalf without having to go through the UN again. The troops there are fully aware of this - they call themselves "speed bumps".

Withdrawing U.S. troops from South Korea would require some sort of ironclad guarantee that North Korea would not invade again, or a guarantee of immediate UN authorization for the U.S. to intervene again, or South Korea unilaterally deciding to give up the deterrence of having U.S. troops present.

Trump's actually sanctioning Chinese companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of ignoring mostly-Chinese companies that do business with North Korea (as Presidents past have done), Trump is actually going after them:

US unveils largest sanctions yet on ships, companies trading with North Korea

The illegal foreign trade that Kim Jong-un uses to keep his army loyal is being threatened if not actually cut off. And he's squirming. Finally.

Re: Trump's actually sanctioning Chinese companies

[SvnLyrBrto]

Simple: We have security obligations to Japan. When we took over and occupied their country following WW2; we took it upon ourselves to write their new constitution for them. Said constitution placed severe restrictions on the size and composition of any future military they'd rebuild. And the missions they're allowed to undertake are similarly restricted. In return, we took upon ourselves the obligation to assure their security. North Korea is just across the sea from Japan, of course. And they've launched missiles into Japanese airspace of late. So I think it's safe to say that NK is a belligerent toward Japan. China has maintained belligerency towards Japan for about as long as I can remember, as well. Just a couple of years ago, they started intercepting and threatening Japanese airliners in International airspace... until the Air Force sent a few B-52s through those same air lanes to show what's up. And China has been trying to muscle in on the Senkaku islands, like they are the Spratlys, for many years as well. Russia, for that matter, is actually still *occupying* some of Japan's northern islands. So yeah, there's a quite legitimate obligation and need for a US presence at least in and around Japan.

A few decades later, President Carter signed into law the Taiwan Relations Act; which requires less comprehensive, but still binding, commitment to the defense of that nation as well. And I don't think rapacity and ambitions towards Taiwan need a reminder.

Geez

[ugen]

Just how badly *did* they screw up their nuclear test site? I mean - this about face is looking a bit too desperate. These guys need to bluff a little better (or did they also keep all their newly minted nuclear weapons at the same site and lost them too?)

More accurately:

[Hartree]

It's: My guy can do no wrong. And the other side's guy is Hitler/Stalin/$Satan_Figure.

If something good happens while my guy is in office it's totally his doing. If something good happens while the other side's guy is in office it's totally due to luck/the previous guy.

Etc, Etc, lather rinse repeat.

And my side is virtuous unlike the immoral other side that has mostly the same human in_group/out_group motivations.

Don't get all worked up

[LynnwoodRooster]

We'll still figure out how to guarantee President Trump gets zero credit for this foreign policy win!

Worked so well for Ukraine..

[abies]

"Welcoming the accession of Ukraine to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as non-nuclear-weapon State,
Taking into account the commitment of Ukraine to eliminate all nuclear weapons from its territory within a specified period of[..]"

The Russian Federation,[...] reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, [...], to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine
The Russian Federation, [...] reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine[...]
The Russian Federation [...] reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine [...], to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind.
etc, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

An unprecedented breakthrough

[quantaman]

Just look at all the goodwill!
With surprising speed and warmth, the presidents of North and South Korea reached a broad agreement on Wednesday to work for peace and unity on their bitterly divided peninsula, the biggest step by either side to ease tensions in 50 years.
The agreement, which came after more than three hours of talks in the North Korea capital, Pyongyang, on the second day of their first summit meeting, was signed and toasted by President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea and President Kim Jong Il of the North, who were shown on South Korean television clinking champagne glasses, shaking hands vigorously and smiling broadly.
[...]
The general points agreed on included the need for reconciliation and unification; the establishment of peace; the commencement in August of exchange visits by members of divided families; and more cultural exchanges.

Wait a minute... Kim Jong... Il?

Oooooh, that article is talking about the peace breakthrough from 2000. My bad, just got the wrong link!

Re:What it means

[dryeo]

Didn't Iraq try that? Worked really well.
The real problem is that the USA is not trustworthy. Even if Trump and the current Congress make promises, the next election can change things.

Re:Out of the goodness of his heart

[quantaman]

Nah, it probably has more to do with the fact that they have Nukes and long range missiles.

I wonder how they plan to credibly enforce the Denuclearization. It's relatively easy to monitor the development of Nukes, you need nuclear plants to get the plutonium and testing ranges to debug the tech. But once a country has working Nukes I don't know how you verify that they've been surrendered.

Didn't we already do this?

[MobyDisk]

This whole thing seems silly and confusing. All parties signed an agreement to this fact in 1953. The only reason the US would invade North Korea is if NK they started firing on someone, which they constantly keep threatening to do. They are the aggressors here. Why are they asking us for what we have alrwady given? Why is the aggressor asking us for peace? How about take away the artillery you have pointed at your neighbor?

Something is afoot here...

Re:How about if the US gives up weapons too?

[Northdot]

Do you know anything about WWII?

With Japan the choice was not "Use Nukes" vs. "Everyone lives in Peace". The alternative was a landed invasion of Japan, with an expected body count far in excess of anything the nukes did. The nukes gave the Japanese leadership a face-saving reason for surrender, saving many lives. Claiming that the U.S. leadership using nukes was "insane" in the context of the Pacific war is ridiculous.

Re:Trump's rhetoric was proven empty

[Bing Tsher E]

You only need study H. Clinton's history during her time as Secretary of State. She's more of a globalist-enabler than a liberal. She and her clients were just itching for her to come to power so she could escalate the conflict in Syria. And it was NEVER about human rights or the plight of the Syrians. It has always been about the natural gas pipeline they want to string over Syrian territory to get said gas to market at a profit.

Re:What it means

[Aighearach]

All of the US nuclear weapons were withdrawn from South Korea in 1991 .

Nuclear deterrent is provided by submarines and forces stationed on US territories in the Pacific.