Wen Zaiyin's "New Peninsular Team"

Journalist/Cao Ran

Published in 2020.7.20, the 956th issue of China News Weekly

　　More than half a month after North Korea bombed the DPRK-ROK joint office, South Korean President Wen Jae-in responded with practical actions in early July. Since assuming the presidency in 2017, he has made comprehensive personnel adjustments to the top of Qingwatai National Security and the unified system. The three most important positions of the head of the National Security Office, the President of the National Intelligence Agency, and the Minister of Unity are "changing coaches" at the same time.

　　When the blast of the Korea-Korea Joint Office sounded, a group of South Korean politicians who had participated in the North-South dialogue called for "it's time to send a special envoy to the North." Quan Qizhi, chairman of the Korea-China Friendship Association and former Presidential Secretary who accompanied Kim Dae-jung to Pyongyang, said bluntly to China News Weekly: "If President Kim Dae-jung faces this situation, he will send a special envoy."

　　Compared with before, Wen Zai has a richer experience of dialogue with the North in the new team of Yin Guoan's unified system. The officials who presided over the DPRK-ROK dialogue and built the bridge between the DPRK and the United States each had their respective promotions, which also reflected Wen Zaiyin's full affirmation of the existing policies.

　　In addition, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State in charge of North Korean affairs, Beghan, visited Seoul from July 7th to 9th, again releasing a positive signal for the DPRK-US talks. Biegen did not publicly mention "complete, irreversible and verifiable denuclearization" during his visit, but only called for the resumption of the DPRK-US negotiations.

　　Former Assistant Secretary of State for Nuclear Non-Proliferation, De Thomas, told China News Weekly, "Now, I doubt the possibility of any serious negotiations between the Trump administration and North Korea before the US election."

　Nominee Jin Dazhong

　　The 74-year-old Zheng Yirong will step down as the head of the National Security Office and become the special advisor to the President on unified diplomatic security.

　　Today, Xu Xun, the newly appointed director of the National Security Bureau, has accumulated richer experience. Xu Xun served as deputy when Zheng Yirong visited Pyongyang as a special envoy. The new Dean of the National Conditions Park Ji-won and the Unification Minister Li Renrong are the main leaders of the Korean-Korean half-government and half-people dialogue over the past 20 years. They are also members of the North-South Dialogue "President Veteran Advisors" formed by Wen Jayin in 2018.

　　Choosing a national security team with more and higher levels of contact with North Korea is itself a policy guide. According to a survey data released by the U.S. think tank in July this year, 56% of South Korean citizens who "know at least one North Korean" support expanded aid in addressing the question of whether aid to North Korea should be expanded. Only 35% of citizens agree.

　　An inconvenient South Korean foreign affairs official told China News Weekly that as a descendant of the "North Korean defectors," Wen Zaiyin is clearly promoting diplomacy, the "Crystal Ball Dream", which also has the same "Resettlement in North Korea". Political figures, in order to form a decision-making atmosphere for dialogue with North Korea in the opposition.

　　Quan Qizhi pointed out to "China News Weekly" that Wen Zaiyin chose "people of the Jin Dazhong era" to form a national security team, and there is another reason why he felt new pressure from the north to free himself from domestic politics. .

　　Since the second "Gint Conference" broke down in February 2019, North Korea has not closed the door to peace talks, but it has repeatedly warned South Korea "don't call yourself a middleman" and pursue direct dialogue with the US. "By this year, President Wen was worried about tensions on the peninsula, so he requested Trump and Kim Jong Un to hold the third summit, but now Kim Jong Un refuses to negotiate with the United States and South Korea, and the summit has no results." Quan Qizhi said.

　　Mark Barry, an American North Korean expert who had participated in the peripheral work of the "Six-Party Talks," also made a similar judgment. "I suspect that North Korea will no longer rely on South Korea when it comes in contact with the United States, because from the perspective of Kim Jong-un, President Wen Zaiyin will only talk empty-handed, and nothing will be fulfilled." He visited Pyongyang many times and speculated about China News Weekly .

　　In order to persuade Kim Jong-un, judging from the characteristics of North Korea's political structure, whether or not he can report to the top leader personally is the most critical factor in determining the success or failure of the incident. In the era of Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun who advocated dialogue with the North by the South Korean government, the head of the North Korean United Front, Kim Yang-jian, was well-known for the "Gold-Gold" route that could report directly to Kim Jong-il. At that time, South Korea was responsible for connecting this route. Park Zhiyuan, the secretary of the Blue House Secretary during the Jin Dazhong government.

　　Quan Qizhi and Park Zhiyuan have a close personal relationship and often discuss the Peninsula issue together. "Piao Zhiyuan did business in the United States when he was young, so he was a very creative negotiator." Quan Qizhi recalled to China News Weekly a detail of the two working together in the secretary office of Qingwatai: Park Zhiyuan worked with media reporters almost every day Drink together, check the news, and then summarize the information in the middle of the night to report to Jin Dazhong.

　　This eclectic way of doing things also made Park Ji-won regarded by South Korean politics as the main contributor to the first meeting between North Korean and South Korean leaders. "When negotiating with North Koreans, he was like a businessman," Quan Qizhi said. "It was he and President Kim Dae-jung who discussed the issue of providing US$500 million in aid to North Korea. This was beyond the imagination of the U.S. government at that time. I like him very much."

　　Since then, Park Ji-won was once detained by the successor government for the crime of "transmitting money to the north," but the DPRK has always maintained his trust in him. This line eventually became the source of the Wen Zaiyin government's dialogue with the North in 2018.

　　The Yonhap News Agency reported that Xu Xun first established contact with North Korean officials in 2000 under the recommendation of then Minister of Culture and Tourism Park Ji-won. Since then, "this contact has continued to this day." Since Xu Xun has been serving in the intelligence system, his network with the North Korean seniors is not public, but he can find clues from the news.

　　Merely using people whom North Korea has long trusted is not enough to change the deadlock. Quan Qizhi pointed out to "China News Weekly" that, more importantly, Park Zhiyuan and Li Renrong's new role symbolizes the complete transformation of the Wen Zaiyin government's policy toward North Korea.

　　"In fact, President Wen Jae-in and President Kim Dae-jung are different. This is one of the issues that has caused the DPRK, ROK, US, and the United States to reach a deadlock." Quan Qizhi said, "In terms of North Korea's policy, Kim Dae-jung has three major areas of sincerity, courage, and innovation strategy. Strong, but Wen Zaiyin only has sincerity. Now, he feels the need for creative strategy, so he nominates Jin Dazhong."

　　The creative strategy is a "prescription" that some experts have recently given to Wen Zaiyin's government. The Stingson Center, a well-known U.S. think tank for North Korea, recently released a long article by North Korea expert Bernhard Seliger, pointing out that if South Korea really wants to achieve ultimate unification, it should consider "focusing on large-scale, show-based activities. In terms of other policies, the two countries are allowed to develop more diversified relations, rather than including the Korean-South Korean nongovernmental exchanges into the government framework for review.

　　Park Ji-won and Li Renrong, who have long presided over the dialogue between North Korea, South Korea, half officials and half people, feel deeply exhausted by this. The South Korean government once rejected Park Ji-won’s two trips to Pyongyang to participate in private dialogues within one month on the grounds that “political figures in South Korea should not go north frequently”, and rejected Li Renrong and representatives of Korean enterprises in the Kaicheng Industrial Park eight times on the grounds of “immature conditions”. The most recent application for our visit to the park was April 30, 2020.

　　However, just when Li Renrong was refused to visit the DPRK for the last time, Wen Zaiyin began to rethink his policies. He vowed to find "realistic and achievable" channels of contact with North Korea at the internal meeting of the Blue House. Since then, the South Korean government has released a vague signal: The Ministry of Unification said on May 20 that it would handle exchanges between the DPRK and the ROK that touched the South Korean "524" unilateral sanctions bill against the DPRK with greater flexibility.

　　On July 6, Li Renrong delivered a speech as the nominee for the Minister of Unification, clarifying Wen Zaiyin’s thoughts on his work with the DPRK in the latter half of his term of office: First, regardless of external factors such as the general election, “From the standpoint of the Korean side, any situation Next, we must ensure that South Korea, North Korea, and the United States are in dialogue. Second, in view of North Korea’s views, “it should be distinguished between what can be done through the South Korea-US working group and what South Korea can decide on its own”.

　　Yonhap pointed out that this means that South Korea and North Korea affairs that do not violate the sanctions against the DPRK, such as travel to the DPRK, can be promoted independently and do not need to be "in step with the US" unilateral sanctions. Selig suggested that the humanitarian aid trade and commercial food industry be opened without touching the UN sanctions, and return to "the situation where thousands of Korean companies participated in small cross-border trade in various ways before 2010."

　　Quan Qizhi also believes that economic exchange is the key to Wen Zaiyin's government's innovative measures, "North Korea just thinks that President Wen did not provide real economic support like Jin Dazhong." He told China News Weekly: "Wen Zaiyin and his The new team may consider economic compensation measures, such as opening up Mount Kong’s group tourism projects, as well as more exchanges at the sports and cultural levels."

　　"The point is that Seoul should not continue to pursue empty and unreal projects like cross-border railways, but should focus on small-scale, sustainable changes and promote a different, more human-centric relationship with North Korea." Selig emphasized.

　　Can you do a big thing?

　　Wen Zaiyin's personnel and policy adjustments seem to bring North Korea closer to the goal they have been calling for since 2018: South Korea first lifted its own unilateral sanctions, and resumed economic cooperation projects such as King Kong Mountain group tourism that "does not require Americans to point fingers". .

　　"Actually, Pyongyang rarely acts on impulse." Robert Carlin, a former senior bureaucratic official in North Korea, pointed out that more and more facts should make people realize that the foreign policy of the Kim Jong-un government is not based on the leaders' impulse. It is "strategic and carefully planned."

　　The continuous changes in North Korea’s attitude towards South Korea and the United States in the last month are justifying Carlin’s view. On June 4, Kim Jong-un’s younger sister, alternate member of the Politburo of the Labor Party’s Central Committee, and considered by the Korean National Institutes of Korea as the new head of South Korea-US affairs for the DPRK issued a statement, distributing flyers through Korean civil society. The normalization incident suddenly announced that extreme measures such as the bombing of the DPRK-ROK joint office may be taken. Subsequently, North Korea bombed the Joint Office, the Labor Party United Front Department issued a more stringent statement, and the Korean People's Army disclosed a four-point military deployment plan.

　　However, the day after the liaison office was dismantled, the Korean Central News Agency clearly wrote that Pyongyang’s next step would be determined by South Korea’s attitude. Wen Zaiyin's government immediately expressed its attitude: insist on continuing the dialogue, calling for the dispatch of special envoys to adjust the policy toward North Korea. North Korea did not accept the special envoy, but a week later the preparatory meeting for the fifth meeting of the 7th Central Military Committee of the Labor Party chaired by Kim Jong-un decided to put aside the military action plan against South Korea proposed by the Korean People’s Army. The North Korean media also stopped publishing anti-Korea reports and comments from June 24, leaving only a slight criticism.

　　"Overall, North Korea has shown flexibility in responding by giving itself enough space to advance and retreat in order to maximize its choices," the Stimson Center pointed out in a July report.

　　Just as Wen Zaiyin appointed the new Guoan team and Li Renrong announced the new policy toward the DPRK, Jin and Zheng also released their latest talks with the United States on July 10, leaving room for it. While she said, "In my opinion, this year's major event such as the DPRK-US summit cannot happen," while adding, "This is my personal thought after all. But this kind of thing can happen, because no one knows the two. What kind of event will suddenly come from the judgment and determination of the leader."

　　Jin Youzheng emphasized that “the issue of lifting sanctions has been completely removed from the consultations with the United States”, and at the same time proposed that “the basic theme of the DPRK-US consultations in the past was'denuclearization measures against lifting sanctions', but this topic must now be Change to'Revoke hostility and restart DPRK-US consultations.'"

　　According to De Thomas, Kim and Jung’s position lacks sincerity, and sanctions and nuclear issues are the key. He told China News Weekly, "The so-called hostile issue is a reasonable topic of dialogue, but it cannot replace the key issue. North Korea is signaling to return to talking about the basis of negotiations instead of actually taking any action to solve the real problems of both parties." He thinks This is Kim Jong-un’s response to Beggen’s visit to Seoul: North Korea doesn’t want to talk now.

　　US North Korea expert Mark Barry pointed out to "China News Weekly" that North Korea is likely to have fully understood Trump's inner "real estate agent" logic: "In the real estate field, you have to buy the entire building, not gradually. Buy a part of it. Trump is like that, he will not associate himself with the interim agreement. The way he sees himself is: a person who only does one big thing."

　　"North Korea may realize that in addition to the US's institutionalized hostility to North Korea's nuclear and missile programs, Trump cannot be persuaded to agree to part of the agreement. Everything is either accepted or abandoned." Barry said. As a result, North Korea gave a consensus that seemed easy to reach, and at the same time pushed the issue of sanctions that it was difficult to resolve between South Korea and the United States.

　　But what may disappoint Wen Zaiyin is that regardless of the direction of the US election in November this year, the new US government will not allow South Korea to unilaterally change its sanctions policy against North Korea. Unlike Bolton's comprehensive sanctions and "maximum pressure" factions, De Thomas is regarded by the US diplomatic community as a representative of the "contact with the DPRK" policy. But in an interview with China News Weekly, De Thomas said that his policy recommendations also included maintaining sanctions against North Korea along with China and South Korea. But he emphasized that "sanctions must be combined with a feasible and strong negotiation track to provide North Korea with a way out of sanctions."

　　"In fact, part of the purpose of Biegen's visit to Seoul is to remind South Korea not to'cross the border' in North Korea-South Korea relations-don't act unilaterally, and the United States has veto power to improve North Korea-South Korea relations." Barry pointed out.

　　China News Weekly Issue 26, 2020

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