Researchers urge Moon Jae-in to form a close working relationship with Donald Trump and to establish a new special envoy role for North Korea policy emulating the “Perry Process”

Researchers from the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) said they are optimistic about the election of South Korean president Moon Jae-in who assumed office last week following waves of protest across the country.

Now that the vacancy left in the wake of former President Park Geun-hye’s impeachment has been filled, the South Korean government needs to work to strengthen bilateral relations with the United States amid escalating tensions in Northeast Asia, they said.

The Moon administration should immediately engage U.S. President Donald Trump and his senior staff at the White House and government agencies, said Kathleen Stephens, the William J. Perry Fellow at Shorenstein APARC.

“Moon would do well to establish a personal relationship with Trump,” said Stephens, who was U.S. ambassador to South Korea from 2008 to 2011. “The new administration must set up a meeting as early as possible and be ready to engage on a range of issues.”

“In a sense, Moon has to play catch-up,” said Shorenstein APARC Director Gi-Wook Shin, who noted that Trump already held in-person meetings with other Asian heads of state in the United States, including summits with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Shin added that a coherent U.S. strategy toward Asia and senior staff appointments in the State and Defense Departments would also aid in supporting the foundation upon which the South Korean and American governments work together on policy challenges, especially North Korea.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities have become more and more advanced over the past few months, and provocations have continued to ratchet up, including its firing of a ballistic missile that landed in the sea near Russia on Sunday and repeat threats to conduct a sixth nuclear test.

The Moon administration must focus on establishing trust and cooperation with the Trump administration because it is the only pathway to finding a resolution to North Korea’s program, said Siegfried Hecker, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, an additional center in the Freeman Spogli Institute.

“Any solution must be compatible with the interests of Seoul, but it has to be done in concert with Washington to get Pyongyang’s attention,” said Hecker, who served as director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and has traveled to North Korea seven times since 2004 to survey its nuclear facilities.

During the campaign, Moon repeatedly spoke of his proposals to reengage the North Korean regime, such as holding talks with its leader Kim Jong-un and re-opening Kaesong Industrial Complex, a joint economic zone on the North Korean side of the border.

Stephens and Shin said Moon’s proposals for North Korean engagement would be a step in the right direction if pursued in due time and led under the direction of a special envoy from South Korea emulating the American “Perry Process.”

The Perry Process, proposed by former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry and implemented in the late 1990s under the Clinton administration, entails the appointment of a senior-level, bipartisan representative to pursue a two-track approach of engagement through joint projects and of continued dialogue on denuclearization with North Korea.

Appointing one person in South Korea to lead North Korea policy would help centralize and streamline its organization, which currently requires coordination of activities across dozens of government agencies, the two researchers noted.

“We recognize that establishing such a position and filling the position would be far from easy,” said Shin, co-author of the study Tailored Engagement. “But the magnitude of the nuclear crisis requires restructuring the way in which the South Korean government deals with North Korea, achieving domestic consensus, and shoring up international support for its efforts.”

The United States, China, Japan and Russia are the key international countries concerned with the peace and stability of Northeast Asia, yet South Korea has both an acute need and the potential to assume greater leadership of North Korea policy, said Shorenstein APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar.

China, as North Korea’s largest trade partner, exercises influence over North Korea by maintaining a commercial relationship in the hope of avoiding a collapse of the regime. Yet, its leverage only goes so far, he added.

The Moon administration should consider the limits of Chinese influence before making policy decisions regarding North Korea, Fingar said, for example, whether to freeze or remove the U.S. anti-ballistic missile system, Thermal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), deployed last April in South Korea, which the Chinese government strongly opposed.

“There is little that Beijing can or will do that would persuade Pyongyang to be more receptive to initiatives from Seoul than it would otherwise be,” said Fingar, a China specialist who served as chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council. “Seoul should not ‘pay’ much to obtain Chinese assistance because China already supports reengagement and would not do more no matter what Seoul offered as an inducement.”

It is of vital importance the Moon administration seeks to strengthen trilateral cooperation between South Korea, Japan and the United States, and to consider holding a summit to address areas of collaboration, all of which would function alongside the China-Japan-South Korea trilateral structure toward creating stability in the region, according to Daniel Sneider, associate director for research at Shorenstein APARC.

“Such cooperation is essential to the security of the region – without it, the United States cannot fulfill its obligation to defend South Korea against the threat posed by North Korea,” said Sneider, who leads the Divided Memories and Reconciliation research project. “Moreover, it’s in the interest of all three countries to tighten such cooperation to balance the rise of China.”

The Moon administration should, above all else, take time to consider its first steps despite pressures to perform early, said Michael Armacost, a fellow at Shorenstein APARC who held a 24-year career in the U.S. government.

“Getting things right is more important than making a quick splash,” said Armacost, a former U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs. “I would advise any new president to proceed at a deliberate pace, focusing particularly on the key personal issues first, and consulting widely before enunciating major policy departures.”

Related links:

South Korea's election: Shorenstein APARC scholars offer insight

Yonhap News: 미 한반도 전문가 그룹 "한국형 페리 프로세스 필요" (May 16, 2017)

VOA: 미 전문가들 "한국 정부, 미국과 북 핵 협력 중요...대북특사도 임명해야" (May 17, 2017)

Shorenstein APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar, FSI Senior Fellow Siegfried Hecker, and CISAC Senior Fellow Scott Sagan are part of a group of 80 national security experts included in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) focused on the prospects for peace and security in South Asia.

The MOOC, titled Nuclear South Asia: A Guide to India, Pakistan, and the Bomb, is an inaugural course in a series produced by the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C. It is free to enroll and can be taken anytime and at any pace from a digital device.

Learn more about the MOOC.

Northeast Asia relations are increasingly under strain as South Korea and China await shifts in political leadership and the threat of a sixth nuclear test by North Korea looms large. Scholars from the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) have offered comment and analysis to media outlets about the evolving environment.

Gi-Wook Shin, director of Shorenstein APARC’s Korea Program, recognized in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor that, while threats posed by North Korea’s nuclear and missile program aren’t new, it is best practice to always be prepared for the possibility of conflict.

“I’m someone who believes that you have to get ready for the worst-case scenario. If something does happen, the consequences will be huge,” said Shin, who recalled the air-raid drills of his youth in the Seoul metropolitan area, which is centered 35 miles from the border of North Korea.

Shin also spoke with Yonhap News about positions held by the Trump administration, which, he said, includes the view that the policy of “strategic patience” has failed and that tensions in Northeast Asia have led the administration to consider – with greater plausibility – the option of a preemptive military strike.

Addressing China’s relationship with North Korea, Shorenstein APARC Associate Director for Research Daniel Sneider wrote an analysis piece for Tokyo Business Today. He argued that, despite President Trump’s tense rhetoric, U.S. policy toward North Korea could so far be described as “‘let China do it.’”

“The ‘let China let do it’ policy is hardly new,” Sneider wrote in the piece, available in English and Japanese.

“Why does the Trump administration believe this will work now? In part, the answer is the same as under the two previous administration – there are no better options available.”

Last month, Kathleen Stephens, the William J. Perry Fellow at Shorenstein APARC, spoke at length about North Korea policy on PBS NewsHour following Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s remarks in Seoul, where he acknowledged, “all options are on the table.”

Asked about the significance of Tillerson’s remarks, Stephens said his speech would be "closely listened to and heard throughout the region, as well as [in the United States]."

“One thing that did strike me about Secretary Tillerson’s remarks was that he was quite specific and categorical in saying now is not the time for talks,” Stephens said in the interview. “I actually would have liked to have seen him keep the door a little bit ajar on that, because I think, when you do have a new administration in Washington…that's a good argument for trying to climb that mountain one more time and seeing what’s possible diplomatically.”

Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) Director Gi-Wook Shin spoke with Yonhap News about the situation on the Korean Peninsula, following a visit to U.S. Pacific Command with a delegation of scholars from the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

While there, U.S. officials conveyed that the United States has the capability to strike North Korea should the president make that call.

U.S. officials said that North Korea had already moved into the “red zone,” and that the Trump administration has the view that it cannot miss a window of opportunity to stop the nuclear and missile program before it advances further.

Shin also said he believed that the Trump administration holds a view that the policy of “strategic patience” failed under the Obama administration, and that growing tensions on the Peninsula have compelled the Trump administration to consider – with greater plausibility – the option of a preemptive military strike.

Regional tensions have risen in the midst of impending political shifts in South Korea, where a new president will assume office following a snap election this May, and in China, where the Party Congress will meet to appoint new senior leadership of the Chinese Communist Party this fall.

Whoever becomes president in South Korea should place relations with North Korea at the top of the agenda and consider sending an envoy early on to meet its leader Kim Jong-un in-person, Shin said.

The Yonhap interview can be viewed in Korean, and a shorter version, in English. A related analysis piece is also available on MK News (in Korean).

President Trump hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping last week at Mar-a-Lago for their first meeting which set out to address economic, trade and security challenges shared between the two countries. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) experts offered analysis of the summit to various media outlets.

In advance of the summit, Donald K. Emmerson, an FSI senior fellow emeritus and director of the Southeast Asia Program, wrote a commentary piece urging the two leaders to prioritize the territorial disputes in the South China Sea in their discussions. He also suggested they consider the idea of additional “cooperative missions” among China, the United States and other countries in that maritime area.

“A consensus to discuss the idea at that summit may be unreachable,” Emmerson recognized in The Diplomat Magazine. “But merely proposing it should trigger some reactions, pro or con. The airing of the idea would at least incentivize attention to the need for joint activities based on international law and discourage complacency in the face of unilateral coercion in violation of international law.”

Kathleen Stephens, the William J. Perry Fellow in Shorenstein APARC’s Korea Program, spoke to the Boston Herald about U.S. policy toward North Korea and a potential role for China in pressuring North Korea to hold talks about denuclearization. She addressed the purported reports that the National Security Council is considering as options placing nuclear weapons in South Korea and forcibly removing North Korean leader Kim Jong-un from power.

“The two options have been on the long list of possible options for a long time and they have generally been found to have far too many downsides,” Stephens said in the interview.

Writing for Tokyo Business Today, Daniel Sneider, the associate director for research at Shorenstein APARC, offered an assessment of the summit. He argued that two events - the U.S. airstrike on an airbase in Syria following the regime's chemical weapons attack and the leaked reports about tensions between White House staff - shifted the summit agenda and sidelined, at least for now, talk of a trade war between China and the United States.

“Instead of a bang, the Mar-a-Lago summit ended with a whimper,” Sneider wrote in the analysis piece (available in English and Japanese). “On the economy, the summit conversation was remarkably business-as-usual, with President Trump calling for China to ‘level the playing field’ and a vague commitment to speed up the pace of trade talks. When it came to North Korea…the two leaders reiterated long-standing goals of denuclearization but ‘there was no kind of a package arrangement discussed to resolve this.”

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced in Seoul “the policy of strategic patience has ended” and “all options were on the table” regarding the United States’ efforts to address the North Korean nuclear threat. Kathleen Stephens, the William J. Perry Fellow in Shorenstein APARC’s Korea Program, spoke on PBS NewsHour about Tillerson’s remarks, the viability of tougher sanctions against North Korea, and deployment of the U.S. ballistic missile defense system (THAAD) to South Korea.

Watch and read about the interview here.