South Korea is still being super nice to Kim — and it could undermine U.S. pressure

The leaders of North and South Korea agreed Monday to meet for a third summit in less than six months — as negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington hit an impasse.

Another sit-down between Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae In is scheduled for September — this time to be held in the North Korean capital. However, the joint statement released by both Koreas came as tensions between Washington and Pyongyang over denuclearization continue to simmer.

There is no set date for the summit, but it could coincide with North Korea’s celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the state’s foundation on Sept. 9, with Kim inviting a number of international dignitaries to Pyongyang for the event.

Moon has worked tirelessly over the last year to foster closer social and economic ties with Pyongyang, and the fact he is willing to travel to the North Korean capital is a sign of how much he wants his diplomatic efforts to succeed.

“Another inter-Korean summit is essential now. If left to the U.S. and North Korea alone, there’s unlikely to be any meaningful progress,” an editorial in the South Korean newspaper Hankyoreh said Monday. “When the planned North Korea-U.S. summit fell into crisis, we need to remember that it was the second inter-Korean summit at Panmunjom that broke the ice and allowed the historic Singapore talks to take place.”

Yet some critics worry Moon is giving Kim too much, in return for very little.

“There is a danger that [Moon] continues pushing economic cooperation and trade — two things that Kim very much wants — before sanctions have pushed Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons,” John Hemmings, Asia Director at the Henry Jackson Society, a British foreign policy think tank, told VICE News. “There is a serious danger that Moon's diplomacy — while well-intentioned — begins to undermine the pressure on the North, which has, after all, got us this far.”

Most of that pressure is coming from the U.S. but since the June meeting between Donald Trump and Kim in Singapore, progress on denuclearization has all but stalled.

On Friday CNN reported that Pyongyang had rejected multiple proposals by U.S. officials for how and when North Korea would get remove its nuclear arsenal. North Korea claims the proposals are “gangster-like” and said that it wants economic sanctions lifted first before it would consider denuclearization.

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North Korea points to the destruction of a nuclear test site, halting missile launches, and the repatriation of U.S. remains as signs that it is keeping up its end of the bargain.

For its part, the U.S. says it has ended controversial military exercises in the region but now wants to see concrete signs that North Korea is working towards complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization before it will lift economic sanctions.

The problem comes down to the vague document signed by Kim and Trump in Singapore that failed to define exactly what denuclearization means, and didn’t set any concrete milestones — allowing both sides to interpret the document as they saw fit.

Cover image: South Korean President Moon Jae In and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un take a walk near the border between their countries in Panmunjeom on April 27, 2018. (Kyodo News via Getty Images)