Today, Explained - Just call us "Korea"

Episode Date: April 27, 2018

For the first time in history, the leader of North Korea took a trip to South Korea today. Kim Jong Un met with President Moon Jae-in to talk unification and denuclearization over some cold noodles. NPR’s Elise Hu was there. She tells Sean Rameswaram what transpired before Vox’s Alex Ward explains whether this truly means the end of a nearly 70-year conflict. ******************************** Watch the Vox Video of leaders Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong Un's joint statement committing to denuclearization and peace on the Korean Peninsula here: https://www.facebook.com/Vox/videos/882052531982350/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I want to soak up the sun. All right. Hi, Sean. ZipRecruiter.com slash explain. Great to see you again. I'm back. Haven't seen you since we placed a posting for our summer internship at Today Explained at ZipRecruiter.com slash explained yesterday.

Yeah, that was a really good time we had. That was a moment. Oh, yeah. You know what? What? We've gotten a bunch of matches from ZipRecruiter. No way. In just 24 hours?

I'm going to tell you all about them. Oh my gosh, please. Elise Hu, National Public Radio Bureau Chief in Seoul. Hi. Hello. What a day it must be. Oh my gosh, I can't imagine. So much happened on the Korean Peninsula today.

I woke up this morning to a hug that felt historic. Yeah, they hugged it out at the end of the day. The North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un, and the South Korean president, Moon Jae-in, they hugged. They did kind of a full body hug. I don't think their hips touched. Right after they signed this joint

Panmunjom declaration. What is the declaration? What does it mean? Is it as historic as that hug felt? Well, it's a huge step. I mean, it's a springboard because it was appropriately vague. I mean, it was vague enough such that it wouldn't tie the hands of other negotiators, for example, the United States, on the thornier issue of just what denuclearization looks like.

But the two Koreas, in terms of what they could do with their longstanding disputes and disagreements went a long way in trying to get to peace, prosperity, and unification of the Korean Peninsula, which is the second part of the name of the declaration. The formal name of the declaration is Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity, and Unification of the Korean Peninsula. Today, we will make sure that the agreement we have reached,

which the people of the Korean Peninsula and the world are watching, does not repeat the unfortunate history of unfulfilled promises by closely communicating and cooperating with each other in order to yield good results. Wow. So lofty goals. So specifically in there is denuclearization eventually and just peace between the Koreas, which has never been formalized since these two countries went to war in 1950.

Is that right? That's correct. Following World War II, Korea got split up never been formalized since these two countries went to war in 1950. Is that right? That's correct. Following World War II, Korea got split up under two different types of leaders. One in the North, who was supported by communists, Kim Il-sung, who is Kim Jong-un's grandfather. And then in the South, the forces of democracy. So it became kind of like a proxy battle in the Cold War and continued that way until the North, Kim Il-sung, decided to try and take the entire peninsula and invade the South, which is how the Korean War broke out in 1950. Due to quirks in how this war ended and who participated, North and South Korea can't just end the war

and sign a peace treaty themselves. So to actually get to a peace treaty, you're going to need the U.S. involved and China. But what this declaration today, what this joint agreement today does is provide a lot of momentum so that the U.S. and China can get brought in to potentially sign off on a peace treaty to

come. You were there for this historic summit today. What was it like? What did it feel like just to be there? And what were the reactions from everyone you were surrounded by to what you were seeing happen between these two leaders who had never met before? That's a great question because they only allowed about 12 pool cameras from South Korea to the border area where the two men held the summit. So for the 1,000 credentialed international press covering this event, we were about 30 minutes south in this giant convention center in the most crowded press file I have ever been in. And I've covered the G7 and the G20 and the Olympics and ASEAN. And I have never been in a press file with so many other journalists that were in there at the same time. We had two huge

screens in front of us in order to watch the live feeds of everything. And when Kim Jong-un first emerged out of the North's building, where he could walk down some steps down to the actual border, you could hear audible gasps that he suddenly appeared, you know? Wow. And, you know, because nobody really sees Kim Jong-un live. Right. When North Korean state media puts out footage and photos of him, it's always taped or photoshopped after. And so to see him huffing and puffing after a brisk walk, to see him sort of like red face,

that was a big deal for a lot of journalists. And for South Korean journalists that were in the room, you actually could hear a roar. You could hear them say, oh, all in unison when the handshake happened. Because we in the US constantly focus on the nuclear issue, the nuclear issue. But this is something really happening between divided people. And so for South Koreans, we saw the drama of division and unification today, especially during a lot of those symbolic moments, like when they sat together to drink tea or they shook hands for the first time. Wow. Yeah. There are like so many made for TV moments today. It sounds like a budding bromance or something.

It almost did. I mean, by the time they got to the hug, it seemed very bromantic. Yeah, I mean, that hug, watching the video, it felt very organic. Like, it wasn't a planned hug. They just kind of went for it. Yeah, that's right. It wasn't an awkward side hug. It wasn't, you know, the dandruff removal that Trump did to Macron. You know, like, it was definitely, it definitely seemed more sincere. What else did they do? They planted a tree, they shook hands, they hugged it out. Did they share a meal or anything like that?

Yeah, they had a big banquet dinner together with their wives. And the menu was carefully planned out. It included dishes that were kind of nods to both leaders' pasts. For instance, Kim Jong-un grew up in Switzerland. So one of the dishes was the Swiss potato dish called rosti. They also had this chocolate dome over a mousse for dessert where they together had to sort of crack the dome with a mallet. So yeah, there was all sorts of planning that went into this day. What led up to this meeting between North and South Korea? What was happening there over the past couple of weeks? So starting from New Year's Day 2018, we've seen the pivot led by Kim Jong-un's choice to sort of go in the diplomatic direction.

He's always sort of telegraphed this idea that he wanted to focus on the economy after he felt like the country's nuclear deterrent was developed. This year has been all about Kim Jong-un trying to act as a statesman. I mean, we have to temper this with a reality check that this is still a dictator who oversees a totalitarian state. The most inhumane gulags in the world are known to be in North Korea. His people cannot leave. They're essentially prisoners in their own country. And he had his brother poisoned to death. So we have to keep all of that in mind and balance all of these realities. However, he is trying to make a policy shift. And that shift does require opening up more to the rest of the world. I'm so curious how South Koreans feel because you've been surrounded by them all day. Do South Koreans now feel like they can see a finish line in this conflict? Well, South Koreans have been here before. This is the third big try at peace between the two Koreas since 1953. So maybe third time's a charm.

But I would say that the South Koreans I've spoken to and that I'm around are viewing this with a wary optimism. A lot of folks warn that, you know, North Korea always has something up its sleeve. But we should point out that this is the first time that there's been an inter-Korean summit at the beginning of a new South Korean presidential administration. So that means that this current president, Moon Jae-in, has four more years. He has a five-year term. So he has four more years to try and make his policies a reality and have this work out. And so time is on his side and time is on South Korea and North Korea's side because there won't be a changeover in administrations or political parties. And there's some guy over here that wants it to work out, too, it seems like. Yeah.

Donald Trump has tweeted about this already. If you haven't already seen, Trump declared an end to the Korean War, even though that's not technically what happened. He said that Americans should be proud of what's happening on the Korean Peninsula. I believe that tweet was sandwiched between some tweets about Kanye West and Chance the Rapper, so definitely got his priorities all lined up. Just another day in Washington. Elise Hu reports on Asia for NPR. We in the U.S. constantly focus on the nuclear issue.

The nuclear issue. After the break. The nuclear issue. I'm Sean Rottenstrom. This is Today Explained. We focus on the nuclear issue. The nuclear issue. After the break. The nuclear issue. I'm Sean Rottenstrom. This is Today Explained. Okay, ZipRecruiter.com slash Explained. I got to say, we've got 20 matches. 20 in 24 hours.

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We in the U.S. constantly focus on the nuclear issue. So it's a pretty big deal for what's going to happen between Kim and Trump later on, either in late May or June. Alex Ward is a defense reporter at Vox. You can think of this Kim and Moon meeting, if this were volleyball, as like a set. And it's up to Trump to kind of have two options of what to do with the ball. He can either spike it or he can block it. Did Trump know this meeting was going to happen? Yes, he was thoroughly aware. The U.S. and South Korea have been quite united, actually, as a front on how to deal with North Korea. They've had some disagreements about when to push, when to not. But this is all kind of

part of a bigger plan, it seems. And based on the agreement that Kim and Moon signed, this does look like a longer term process with now the Kim-Trump summit being sort of the next big step. What does a denuclearized North Korea mean for the United States military, for the South Korean military, for the region? So it would be a massive shift in sort of the geopolitics of that whole region. Right, I imagine. So North Korea has, I mean, let's give some credit where credit is due to Kim Jong-un here. By massively accelerating the missiles program, the nuclear weapons program, he's able to get a meeting with the South Korean president, but most importantly, with the most powerful man in the world, Donald Trump.

It's an amazing thing for an impoverished country to get, right? So he earned this moment. So stepping from here now, no one really believes that Kim Jong-un is going to completely get rid of all of his nuclear weapons, right? Because imagine what could happen then. You could imagine that the US or South Korea would attack, right? North Korea and Pyongyang has no real opportunity to respond because they're out of nuclear weapons. So that's something that Kim Jong-un wants. But Kim would probably want some sort of guarantee, like the removal of America's 28,000 or so troops out of the peninsula.

That would be a massive deal and it would be a huge blow to kind of the way the US and South Korea have an alliance structure. The security guarantee is one of the backbones of that. Going even broader, you've got China backing North Korea this entire time effectively. Yeah. Because for China, what it does like having is North Korea is a buffer state between the U.S. military and South Korea, which is a government that is sort of weird with Beijing. And of course, Japan would be on the U.S. and South Korean side in this case.

But what you have to know is a lot of the geopolitics of that region has been completely dependent on a nuclear North Korea, right? The U.S., South Korea, Japan, even though they all have their own animosities towards each other to a certain extent, have kind of served as a front. You've had China kind of serving as a backer for North Korea, but all this has been based on a nuclear Pyongyang. What happens when that changes? That's a big reshuffle. This feels very historic, but I feel like it's important to point to the fact that North Korea has promised to denuclearize before. We haven't been here in terms of the optics of this, right? Like a North Korean leader stepping over the DMZ line, holding hands with the South Korean leader, signing a joint, like that was amazing.

Historically, in terms of substance, we have a different issue. So in 1991, you had North Korea and South Korea agree to basically to end hostilities. Yeah. They never signed that agreement. So the Korean War continues to this day. That agreement of peace between the Koreas was December 1991. The following month, January 1992. Okay.

Both countries agreed not to test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy, or use nuclear weapons, and then also possess nuclear reprocessing and uranium, blah, blah, blah. Sure. Of course, we know this not to be true on North Korea's side, right? They've clearly been developing a nuclear program. They've clearly been developing missiles that can hit not only Japan

and South Korea, but also the United States. So did they sign that one? It was signed. So they said they'd do it, but they just opted not to do it. They haven't done it. They backed out. Was that it between 92 and now? There were other sort of agreements, but the one people still point to as kind of the missed opportunity was 2005.

There's this thing called the Six Party Talks, which were the U.S., China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and then North Korea. This is under President George W. Bush. This would be under George W. Bush. Here's what North Korea pledged to do, that it would get rid of, quote, all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs, unquote. That was an amazing agreement, right? North Korea is agreeing to give up its nuclear weapons. Sounds pretty good. Sounds pretty good. The U.S. effectively and others kind of go, okay, well, in exchange for that, we will normalize relations with you, which means like actually having diplomatic ties, give it economic aid, right? North Korea is a desperately poor country. Yeah. No more threats against North Korea. So kind of like stop coming at us, give us money and let's be friends. It's kind of the

general trade, right? No more nuclear weapons for that. Yeah. Backed out in 2007. North Korea said, no, screw that. We still want our nuclear weapons. It's still a security guarantee. So we're still here. We're still at this point. So let's be very careful to not kind of fall in this trap again, right?

It's weirdly kind of like going back to an ex-boyfriend. Who's like treated you badly, promises they'll change. You go back, you're like, this time it will be for real. And it's possible this time could be for real. We have new actors in a new context. The new actors, of course, you have Trump, who desperately wants a deal. You have Kim, who has said now the economics of his country matter to him a lot. And he's also probably worried about a strike from the U.S.

You've got a South Korean president who desperately also wants a deal. And Moon, the president of South Korea, is the son of North Korean refugees. The other context is, well, when they were having these negotiations in decades past, North Korea didn't have a nuclear weapon seven times stronger than Hiroshima and possibly the delivery system, the intercontinental ballistic missile with the ability to reach all of the United States. So we've never been in this moment with three leaders who are looking for something. One of the things the US has always done was kind of hold the meeting with the president hostage to negotiate with North Korea. Like, until you do what we want, you will not meet the president.

Trump has flipped that on its head. Let's meet first, and then let's let the lower level folks kind of figure out the implementation plan. In a weird way, it's crazy enough to work. Historically, this is insane. But these two leaders might kind of get along. They are impulsive. They are hot to anger.

They are strong-willed. They have funny hair. It might be worth seeing what comes of this. All right, ZipRecruiter.com, Sash Explained. I just want to ask, it's been a week. It's been an adventure. It's been epic. We've got a posting up on ZipRecruiter. How do you feel looking back on this week? Man, you know, it has been a really nice week.

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