The South Korean conservatives, he told me, still considered the only “authentic peace” to be unification by absorption, one in which North Korea surrendered or collapsed. “No such thing is possible,” Moon Chung-in said. “The difficult task in all this,” he added, “is how to persuade North Korea to make peace with South Korea while maintaining the alliance with America and keeping the U.S. troops in South Korea.” To achieve that, North Korea could not be demonized. President Moon’s approach to détente was a pragmatic one, he claimed, not the fruitless dream that conservatives condemned it as.

With that in mind, South Korea’s interest in the Singapore summit, then, had little to do with a comprehensive deal to resolve Moon Jae-in’s “difficult task.” Any agreement would effectively be meaningless, since neither Trump nor Kim could be trusted. What Moon Jae-in wanted was for Donald Trump to avoid damaging the progress he’d made at the DMZ, along with a little help promoting support for peace with the North in South Korea. That’s why Moon Jae-in said Trump could have his Nobel Peace Prize—as a pat on the back! And if Kim stopped violating his subject’s human rights, great, because it made it easier for Moon to sell peace to his citizens. But it wasn’t that important. (There is still no evidence that North Korea has suspended its nuclear weapons program, and in August, Trump canceled Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s planned visit to Pyongyang; by September the trip was back on.)

When I brought up human rights, Moon Chung-in cut me short. “It’s for North Korea to decide. It’s their destiny. We tend to have some illusion that we can shape the political lives of North Korea. Look at America, and how many times they intervened in the name of human rights and democracy. They always failed!” He paused, as if reconsidering his words. He said that some Americans might argue that a free and democratic South Korea is a successful example of intervention. He disagreed. “It was the people of South Korea who achieved democracy.”

In June, the DMZ summit and Singapore would be cited as significant factors in the landslide electoral victories for Moon’s Democratic Party. They took eleven out of twelve available seats in the National Assembly, and 14 out of 17 major municipality chiefs. Lee Jun-seok, “Park Geun-hye’s kid,” lost badly. Liberals are now fully in control of South Korea. Moon’s approval rating reached 84 percent, an all-time high.

Before leaving for Singapore, I visited the Yongsan Garrison, an American military base in the middle of Seoul. At 617 acres, and at its peak home to 22,000 U.S. military and other personnel, it is alarmingly large for a foreign military base in a country’s capital. It was originally built in 1910 by the Japanese Imperial Army during the occupation of Korea; in 1945, control of it passed to the U.S. Eighth Army. For Seoul’s ten million citizens, it’s a place of mystery; South Koreans must be approved for entry.

Under a relocation agreement signed in 2003 by American and South Korean presidents George W. Bush and Roh Moo-Hyun, the U.S. Army is finally moving out of Seoul, to Camp Humphreys, 40 miles south, in the city of Pyeongtaek. The relocation was delayed for many years due to protests over the U.S. military presence, and the cost. (South Korea is responsible for 92 percent of the $10.7 billion budget for the move, on top of its annual payments of more than $800 million for the upkeep of U.S. troops in the country.)

On the day of my visit, many of the barracks were already empty. A young American college student who had grown up on the base showed me around. She was home for summer break and was sad that by the next time she returned, it would all be dismantled. “What are the chances of your childhood home being completely erased?” she said, while leading me through what looked like an American suburb.

One of the barracks had a sign that read YUJIN KATUSA SNACKBAR. What made me pause was the word KATUSA—Korean Augmentation to the United States Army, a branch of the South Korean forces attached to the U.S. military. Growing up in South Korea, I had heard it mentioned often, although it seemed to me always with a trace of shame. All South Korean young men must serve two years of mandatory military service. Those who are selected for KATUSA are usually from the top colleges, and are typically regarded with envy, since they get a chance to practice their English and be posted in Seoul. But there is also an uncomfortable aspect to it. South Koreans are keenly aware that a group of their best young men are serving the U.S. Army, a sad metaphor for modern Korean history.

The inclusion of KATUSA in the name meant that this was a Korean restaurant, and, sure enough, the menu displayed all Korean dishes, though some of it was fusion using the military supply of Spam and yellow Kraft cheese slices. The American student told me that the place is run by a halmoni (old woman) who had been there “forever.” Inside, I found a very small, wrinkled old woman clearing tables. When she sat down with a huge basket of soybean sprouts, I sat across from her and offered to help snap the tail off each sprout, as my mother does when making soup.

Her name was No Jung-nyu. She was born in 1938 and had run this place since the 1980s. Her two daughters, now in their forties, cooked in the kitchen, and her middle-aged son worked the counter. She told me how life was hard, especially after the war, but here at Yongsan Garrison, she had found a home. Americans were so friendly and good to her. “Very kind,” she said.

She was hoping to be relocated to Camp Humphreys. Because I came from America, she seemed to think I might have some pull. She was losing sleep at night worrying about the prospect of her future and her family’s livelihood. They would all be jobless if they do not get selected, she said, and they loved serving their American army customers. When I asked her how the selection for relocation was being made, she said she had no idea, but that it would be Americans who decided who would go to the new base. “It’s always Americans who control.”





