Koreas create their own hope

There’s a country where, unlike in Brazil, it is former conservative presidents who appear in court, are sentenced for embezzlement and go to prison. Where the right, far right and Protestant fundamentalists all feel betrayed by President Donald Trump. Where Trump seems to want to resolve a conflict that all his predecessors failed to end (including Barack Obama, though he won the Nobel peace prize), instead of challenging a nuclear disarmament agreement as with the Iran deal, or a medium-range missile treaty, as with Russia.

This country must be in the Far East and too complicated to be part of the grand narrative of good and evil that shapes, and distorts, our view of the world. It’s South Korea, and as the global situation is so dark, the optimistic, proactive speech by its President Moon Jae-in should not have gone unnoticed. On 26 September he told the UN General Assembly: ‘Something miraculous has taken place on the Korean peninsula.’

It may not be a miracle, but it’s certainly a total turnaround. No one has forgotten the hostile ‘fire and fury’ tweets Trump exchanged with North Korean president Kim Jong-un just a year ago: ‘I too have a nuclear button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his’, etc. The outgoing US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, has recently admitted that on 2 September 2017 she raised with her Chinese counterpart the prospect of a US invasion of North Korea, to goad China into action over its neighbour and ally. Now Trump hails the ‘courage’ of Kim Jong-un, his ‘friend’. At a Republican rally Trump even claimed he ‘fell in love’ with him.

Koreans in both North and South are making rapid headway, taking advantage of the alignment of the stars: South Korea’s right has fallen apart; the North seems at last to be prioritising economic development. Trump’s government, lambasted by Democrats and the US media for what they see as an unwise rapprochement with North Korea, will not willingly admit that the self-proclaimed maestro of the ‘art of the deal’ has been outsmarted by someone more cunning. If the US chose to revert to fire and fury, the rapid deterioration of its relations with China and Russia makes it highly unlikely they would fall into step with it.

In the big picture, the nuclear disarmament of the Korean peninsula should not become a precondition for other elements of the negotiation: the suspension of military manoeuvres on both sides, the lifting of economic sanctions, and a peace treaty. North Korea will never give up its nuclear life insurance policy without solid guarantees. Trump will not last forever, nor will his goodwill, which is a paradoxical reason for optimism that the next few months might settle a conflict that has already lasted three-quarters of a century.