SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Leaders of rival Koreas exchanged letters expressing hope for improved bilateral relations, which have plummeted over the past three years amid a freeze on nuclear talks and North Korea’s accelerated arms development.
North Korea’s state media said leader Kim Jong Un received a personal letter from outgoing South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Wednesday and replied Thursday with a letter of his own praising Moon’s peace efforts during his tenure. The official Korean Central News Agency of Pyongyang said on Friday their exchange of letters showed their “deep trust”.
Experts say North Korea’s announcement of the letters, which came as Kim may be preparing for a nuclear test and other major provocations, is aimed at dividing public opinion in South Korea and preventing the new Seoul government from taking office after taking office in May to take a hard line on Pyongyang.
KCNA said Moon told Kim he would remain committed to Korean reunification after leaving office next month, basing his efforts on their joint peace declarations made after their 2018 summits.
Kim and Moon shared the view that if (the North and the South) make tireless efforts with hope, “inter-Korean relations would improve and develop as desired and expected by the (Korean) nation,” KCNA said.
Moon’s office confirmed the exchange of letters shortly after KCNA’s report, but spent hours releasing its version of what it said, which indicated the North did not coordinate with Seoul before announcing the exchange. KCNA’s report was not published in the north’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper, which was read by its local audience, showing that the news was intended for the south.
According to Seoul, in his letter to Kim, Moon acknowledged setbacks in inter-Korean relations but insisted their aspired peace pledges during their 2018 summits and an accompanying military deal to defuse clashes in border areas remain relevant as a basis for future cooperation.
Moon also expressed hope for a resumption of nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang and that Kim will continue working with Seoul’s next government led by conservative President-elect Yoon Suk Yeol, Moon’s spokeswoman Park Kyung-mee said.
While sending a letter to the North’s leader is a courtesy as the South leaves office, analyst Cheong Seong-Chang of the South’s private Sejong Institute said the North released the face-to-face exchanges with the aim of causing a split in South Korea to create before a change of government.
“Considering the signs that North Korea is preparing for its seventh nuclear test, it is questionable whether it was appropriate that President Moon sent a letter to Chairman Kim to express his cordial greetings,” Cheong said.
Yoon, who takes office on May 10, has harshly called Moon’s foreign policy “subservient” to North Korea and said he will not continue “talks for the sake of talks.” He has promised to strengthen South Korea’s defenses in connection with its alliance with the United States, which he says would include improving pre-emptive strike capabilities and missile defense systems to deter North Korean attacks.
Tensions on the Korean peninsula have been rising since a series of North Korean weapons tests this year, including the first flight test of an ICBM since 2017 in March, which revived the nuclear brinkmanship aimed at forcing the US to accept it as a nuclear power and lifting crippling sanctions.
The South Korean military has also uncovered signs that North Korea is rebuilding tunnels at a nuclear test site it had partially dismantled weeks before Kim’s first meeting with then-President Donald Trump in June 2018, a possible indicator that the country is preparing for the resumption prepared by atomic bomb tests.
Moon, who staked his only presidential term on inter-Korean rapprochement, met Kim three times in 2018 and has been heavily involved in organizing Kim’s meetings with Trump. But diplomacy never recovered from the collapse of the second Kim-Trump meeting in Vietnam in 2019, at which Americans rebuffed North Korea’s demands for a substantial lifting of sanctions in exchange for dismantling an aging nuclear facility, resulting in a partial handover of their nuclear facility would have equaled nuclear capabilities.
Kim has since vowed to step up his nuclear deterrent to counter “gangster-like” US pressures and accelerated his weapons development despite limited resources and pandemic-related difficulties.
North Korea also broke off all cooperation with Moon’s government, while expressing anger at the continuation of US-South Korea military exercises, which have been curtailed in recent years to encourage diplomacy with the North, and at Seoul’s inability to wresting concessions from Washington on his behalf.
Analysts say North Korea is likely to escalate its gun demonstrations in the coming weeks or months to force a response from the Biden administration, which has focused on Russia’s war on Ukraine and a rivalry with China.
Biden’s special envoy for North Korea, Sung Kim, traveled to Seoul this week for meetings with senior South Korean officials and said they agreed a strong response was needed to counter North Korea’s “destabilizing behavior”.
After years of maintaining a conciliatory tone, Moon’s government has taken a firmer stance on North Korea’s weapons tests this year, criticized Kim’s government for ending its self-imposed suspension of long-range missile tests and urged a return to diplomacy.
Seoul has also accused North Korea of destroying South Korean facilities at the North’s Diamond Mountain Resort, where they held tours together until 2008. Kim called South Korea’s facilities there “shabby” in 2019 and ordered their demolition, despite work being delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.