Allies should cooperate for regional peace
President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Joe Biden have agreed to work out a joint “comprehensive” strategy on North Korea. The agreement came during their phone talks Thursday. They also said they would work together to realize their shared goal of denuclearizing the North and bringing peace to the region.
The agreement represents the two leaders' commitment to resolve the North Korea issue. Cooperation between the two allies is crucial in restarting stalled denuclearization talks between Washington and Pyongyang. Thus Moon and Biden should have close consultations to map out how to deal with Pyongyang.
To that end, they have agreed to hold a summit as soon as the COVID-19 pandemic is brought under control. The Biden administration needs to speed up the process of reviewing America's North Korea policy. It should not put the nuclear issue on the backburner, although the U.S. has more urgent matters on its foreign policy agenda.
Biden told Moon during their half-hour conversation that it was important for the allies to maintain the same position on the matter. We could not agree more. Biden is expected to come up with a policy toward the North which is different from that of his predecessor Donald Trump who opted for a “top-down” approach.
Some pundits predict that Biden will take a “bottom-up” method, focusing on working-level negotiations rather than Trump's much-hyped summitry with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Yet the ultimate policy goal is to have Pyongyang abandon its nuclear arsenal whatever approach the new U.S. president takes.
What the joint comprehensive strategy exactly means is as yet unknown. But it should be based on mutual understanding that Seoul and Washington make joint efforts to achieve the denuclearization of the North and establish a lasting peace on the peninsula. South Korea and the U.S. must strengthen their alliance before finding a solution to the nuclear showdown with Pyongyang. As Biden pointed out, the seven-decade-long alliance is the linchpin of regional peace and prosperity.
In this regard, we welcome the two leaders' agreement to develop the alliance into a “comprehensive and strategic” one that can go beyond the peninsula and the Indo-Pacific region to promote democracy, human rights and multilateralism. We have high expectations that Biden will beef up alliances with other countries and restore the U.S.' global leadership as he promised.
But it is also true that the two countries face some thorny issues such as defense cost-sharing for the upkeep of American troops here and Seoul's bid to take over wartime operational control of its troops from the U.S. military. These issues can be tackled smoothly if both sides make compromise to boost mutual interests.
It is also worth noting that Moon and Biden shared the view that an improvement in relations between South Korea and Japan is pivotal to solidifying trilateral security partnerships. We hope the U.S. president will play a certain role in helping Seoul and Tokyo mend their estranged ties over historical issues such as wartime sex slavery and forced labor.