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Experts: Pyongyang Unlikely to Welcome Moon's Call for Reviving Inter-Korea
Ties

Han Sang-mi

   WASHINGTON - Pyongyang is unlikely to respond positively to a call by
   South Korean President Moon Jae-in for reviving inter-Korean projects
   and efforts to invite North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to Seoul, experts
   say.

   "I don't think there's a great chance for North Korea to respond to
   this [positively]," Park Won-gon, a professor of international studies
   at South Korea's Handong Global University, said.

   In his New Year's address delivered Tuesday, Moon urged his government
   to push forward with stalled inter-Korean projects. Moon also called
   for renewed inter-Korean efforts to invite Kim to South Korea.

   "The South and North should work together to create the conditions for
   Chairman Kim Jong Un's visit [to South Korea] as soon as possible,"
   Moon said.

   "I have a willingness to meet again and again and hold ceaseless
   dialogue. We will continue to invest efforts for resumption of the
   Kaesong Industrial Park and tours to Diamond Mountain," he said.

   Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said, "I
   admire [Moon's] perseverance, but I think Kim's behavior toward [South
   Korea] over the past year has been crystal clear."

   "Kim feels he has gotten all he can from Moon, that Moon won't go
   beyond U.N. sanctions, that Moon is a one-term president with two years
   left, and therefore, Kim has no use for him," he said.

   In June, Kwon Jong Gun, chief of the North Korean Foreign Ministry's
   U.S. affairs department, said, "It's better for the South Korean
   authorities to mind their own business at home."

   Three summits

   Moon and Kim have held three summits since inter-Korean ties thawed in
   2018, and Kim set a foot across the inter-Korean border at their first
   summit, held in April 2018.

   On November 5, 2019, Moon invited Kim to attend a regional summit in
   Busan, South Korea, later in the month, but Kim declined the offer.

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