Solving Crisis in the Korean Peninsula: It’s all about mindset and trust

Noto Suoneto
4 min readJan 25, 2019
Personal documentation

The great accomplishments made in the process of solving Korean crisis in the Inter-Korean Summit last year on 27th of April which has resulted the Panmunjom Declaration as a remarkable outcome. The international community is addressing the high appreciation towards the peace progress made between two countries. However, there are some challenges and questions present afterwards which need to be further analyzed in order to prevent uncertainty along this process.

As what Dr. Hyun Jin Moon has argued in his outstanding book, “Korean Dream” published in 2016, the key of peace transformation is by winning the hearts and minds of Korean people as the full support of unification and could not rely only on the political engagement between Seoul and Pyongyang.

The most important part is to encourage a fundamental changes occurred in the North Korean society to have perception that living without nuclear weapon is the better option for their life opportunity. It is all about changing mindsets and way of thinking which definitely hard to do since this has been standing for many decades under three generation of leadership.

The North Korea’s nuclear weapons will depend on the nature of the leadership, so the decision of Kim Jong Un is central or significant on this matter. There is a possibility even the decision of denuclearization is uphold, the regime might not comply it afterwards when the mindset of protecting nation’s sovereignty and pursuing high bargaining position can only be reached through the usage of nuclear. Therefore, all countries involved in this process must beware in preventing miscalculation on their actions.

Personal trust has been made between two leaders which showing us the optimistic values in the future movement. Hence, for the time being, South Korea should build up more clear approaches and steps in terms of supporting the positive development in the Korean Peninsula. It is necessary to establish or create concrete actions that are focusing to guide all the efforts in the unification process.

The declaration did not contain any details on how the North executes the complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization (CVID) and the approaches that both countries take on unification. The issue of unification and integration has been debated since long time ago and needs to be concretely adjudged.

The 7th trilateral summit meeting in Tokyo also has shown to us the full commitment of South Korea, Japan and China in pushing the North Korea’s complete denuclearization to take place. Even though the statement of dismantling the nuclear weapons has not been clearly translated into concrete action by Kim during the Inter-Korean summit, Japan in this position is willing to normalize the ties with Pyongyang if the issue of abduction brought into the table of negotiation.

The movement of Pyongyang to improve ties with the outside world can be seen through the submitted proposal to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) that is aiming to establish the flight route to a third country which is also linking Seoul as the main route.

Kim will surely take more considerable and careful steps ahead following the decision that has been made. Having few decades as an isolated country, North Korea needs to formulate strategy to communicate with other countries in the region in which Indonesia can offer to take more roles in facilitating the relations with South East Asian countries and ASEAN as an institution.

The meeting between Kim and Trump that was held in Singapore on 12 June 2018 is essential to project the strategic steps of bringing fundamental changes over nuclear missile problems in the Korean Peninsula. In order to support changes, two leaders need to watch over the sanction on whether it should be off or remain prevail after seeing the diplomatic approaches of North and definitely North’s commitment to create peace and stability in the region by removing its nuclear arms. The choice of Singapore is a right decision considering it would represent the contribution of the whole ASEAN in promoting peace and security.

Dealing with bringing peace in the Korean Peninsula is a complex challenge which covers many issues and it is required to take consistent and progressive steps towards the effort of denuclearization and bringing the systemic approaches in supporting the unification. Concerning this positive progress of peace development between two Koreans, any kind of provocation must be prevented to be occurred. The intention to have the second meeting between President Trump and Chairman Kim in Vietnam was a gesture of the North to convey its strength on this diplomatic drama. Two Korean leaders has built more trust seen at the summit last month, and this trust must be enhanced among all major countries involved such as the United States and China even Japan. The significance of maintaining trust is a key word to also make the Trump-Kim meetings in the future ended in the successful way and we all hope it will bring up more positive outcomes in the Korean Peninsula.

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