Kim raises pressure on South Korea to split with Trump

Bloomberg

Both North Korea and left-leaning supporters of South Korean President Moon Jae-in want him to restore economic ties broken by security tensions. But pleasing them would mean angering US President Donald Trump.
North Korea said it was closing down communication links set up two years ago between Moon and Kim Jong-un, jeopardising the South Korean leader’s 2017 campaign promise to move the heavily armed rivals towards a permanent peace. It’s bad timing for Moon: His ruling bloc secured a historic supermajority in National Assembly elections in April, boosting calls within his Democratic Party to mend ties with North Korea.
The problem for Moon is that he doesn’t have much he can offer North Korea without prompting a blowup from the Trump administration, which has repeatedly rejected South Korea’s calls for sanctions relief. The US has refused to relax United Nations penalties and other measures against the regime without greater commitments on arms reduction from Kim.
Woo Won-shik, a senior lawmaker and a former Democratic Party floor leader, said there was an “urgent need” to revive inter-Korean cooperation, arguing that failure to act now could further isolate North Korea and bring about a return to the brinkmanship of three years ago. Kim earlier this year said he would soon debut a “new strategic weapon” — part of a bid to pressure Trump, who faces an election in November, back to the negotiating table.
“There are many inter-Korean projects that can proceed without breaching the existing UN sanctions regime,” Woo said.
The latest dust-up — triggered by South Korean activists who sent anti-Pyongyang messages in balloons across the border — comes ahead of the 20th anniversary of the first meeting between top leaders of the divided Koreas. The summit beginning on June 13, 2000, was the biggest moment of then-President Kim Dae-jung’s reconciliation effort that led to stepped up trade and joint projects and helped earn the South Korean leader the Nobel Peace Prize.
While that “Sunshine Policy” helped cool tensions, it was also criticised for providing Pyongyang’s leaders with cash needed to build up its nuclear weapons program. Smaller measures that might allow only a trickle of foreign currency back into cash-starved North Korea also risk disappointing Kim Jong-un and Moon’s allies, who see their current strength in parliament as their best chance to secure lasting change.
The South Korean government plans to cancel the licenses of two groups that sent balloons with leaflets across the border and ask prosecutors whether they can bring charges on suspicion of violating an inter-Korean exchange law,
the Unification Ministry said. Leaflets have flown across the border for years and been allowed as free speech.
North Korea’s relations with Moon haven’t been the same since Trump walked out of a summit with Kim in February 2019 in Hanoi. The North Korean leader was pushing a plan backed by Seoul to give up his antiquated Yongbyon nuclear facility in exchange for sanctions relief — an offer that came nowhere near the Trump administration’s demand for the “final, fully verified denuclearisation of North Korea.”
“It is a sense of betrayal and disappointment,” said Rachel Minyoung Lee, a former analyst for the US government specialising in North Korea.
Kim Jong-un may follow up his move to cut communications links with more missile tests, but making sure to avoid the wrath of Trump.