South Korean President Moon Jae-in will visit Washington D.C. to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden on May 21. This will be Moon’s 10th meeting with a U.S. president and the 71st meeting between the leaders of the two countries since 1952. South Korea’s presidential Blue House said that they will discuss various issues, including denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and other global challenges such as Covid-19 and climate change.
The first summit between the leaders of the two countries was held in December 1952, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower visited South Korea during the Korean War and met with President Syngman Rhee. Rhee visited the United States in 1954 to meet with Eisenhower for the first U.S.-South Korea summit in Washington.
Rhee’s state visit to the United States lasted for two weeks. It was just a year after the Korean War ended. It drew wide attention from the international community because it showed how confident Rhee was in his leadership, by showing that he could leave a country that was believed to be unstable due to war for a two week foreign visit. The alliance between the two countries was officially signed in October 1953, and many believe that Rhee’s visit solidified the agreement. Rhee was able to persuade Eisenhower to provide a $700 million grant to the war-torn country.
In South Korea, many argue that the most successful summit with the United States was the 1965 summit between Park Chung-hee and Lyndon B. Johnson. Park earlier visited the United States in 1961 and met with John F. Kennedy. This was shortly after Park took power through a coup, and he did not have much experience of meeting with foreign leaders at that time. Many of his advisors later said that the meeting with Kennedy was somewhat awkward and uncomfortable. Park learned from this experience and studied and prepared for the meeting with Johnson more enthusiastically.
President Johnson provided great hospitality, holding a party at the White House Rose Garden. At that time, Park held key diplomatic cards, such as dispatching more servicemen to Vietnam and normalizing relations with Japan. Many believe that this was why President Johnson provided such deep hospitality to a leader from a developing country. The United States’ power was hitting its peak at that time, accounting for 40 percent of the global GDP, and Johnson’s hospitality surprised South Korea.
However, Park’s summit with Jimmy Carter in Seoul in June 1979 did not go well. Carter pressed Park on human rights issues and asked Park to stop some of the measures he was taking that restricted people’s rights. Park fought back and argued that, “The freedom of the United States would have to be restricted as well if the Soviets conduct(a) surprise attack against Washington.” Park’s advisors and translators tried to tone down his comments, but they later said that it did not work out.
In January 1981, President Chun Doo-hwan met with President Ronald Reagan in Washington. South Korea was in turmoil at that time after the assassination of Park Chung-hee in October 1979 and the large-scale democratization movement that led to the Gwangju Uprising in 1980.
Chun became the new president of the country soon after the uprising, and some liberals questioned his legitimacy. Chun wanted to discuss various ongoing issues, including giving up South Korea’s ambition for nuclear weapons and legitimizing him as the new president of the country.
One of Chun’s key advisors later wrote that the Reagan administration asked for two things – one was giving up the nuclear ambition and the other was an end to funding of the Unification Church. However, it was later found out that President Reagan accepted the summit with Chun as long as Chun pardoned Kim Dae-jung, a key democratization movement activist who later became president of South Korea. Many South Korean people only recall the Kim Dae-jung issue when they think about the summit between Chun and Reagan.
President Kim Young-sam held a summit with President Bill Clinton in 1993. Kim ran for president as part of the conservative party, and was considered one of the key figures that led democratization in South Korea. He often called himself the first civilian president with no military background.
However, the summit did not go well due to disagreement over the terms that were to be used for denuclearization negotiations with North Korea. Kim wanted to use a “thorough and broad approach,” instead of a “comprehensive approach,” which was the term used by his political rival Kim Dae-jung.
According to South Korean advisers who attended the meeting, Clinton seemed to be disappointed by this debate and did not understand why Kim Young-sam would try to change the term after the two countries’ working groups already made the final decision to use the term “comprehensive approach.”
Leftist President Kim Dae-jung’s summit with President George W. Bush held in March 2001 was considered as the worst summit since the Park Chung-hee and Carter summit.
Kim Dae-jung met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, current leader Kim Jong-un’s father, in Pyongyang in June 2000. Kim Dae-jung announced the so-called “Sunshine Policy,” which professed that a warm engagement through economic development, tourism, and cultural exchange would lead to a more open North Korea. Some criticized the policy, arguing that it is a soft-headed policy that pumped money into North Korea based on a fantasy that the Kim Jong-il regime could be bribed into change. Some commentators also pointed out that it gave the Kim regime access to money to develop nuclear weapons and hold the world at ransom.
Kim tried to persuade President Bush to join his engagement policy toward North Korea, but it did not work out.
At a press briefing held after the summit, Bush said “let me say how much I appreciate this man’s leadership in terms of reaching out to the North Koreans.” Many South Korean political commentators were shocked by Bush using the term “this man” to describe his counterpart Kim Dae-jung, and assumed that it shows how U.S. President was uncomfortable with Kim’s Sunshine Policy.
At that time, President Bush was not happy with his predecessors’ Bill Clinton and Kim Dae-jung for their engagement policy with North Korea. At the end of Clinton’s presidency, his secretary of state, Madeleine K. Albright, flew to Pyongyang and spent six hours trying to persuade Kim Jong-il to suspend his missile tests.
Some conservatives in the United States were upset that Clinton was trying to influence the 2000 U.S. presidential election by promoting the visit as a successful diplomatic achievement. Kim Dae-jung was working as a middleman to arrange Albright’s visit to North Korea. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Bush denounced North Korea as part of the “axis of evil” along with Iran and Iraq, a move that swiftly ended contact with Pyongyang.
Kim’s successor, fellow leftist Roh Moo-hyun, also had an uncomfortable relationship with George Bush. President Roh wanted to follow Kim’s Sunshine Policy. Roh and Bush met in Gyeongju, a southeastern city in South Korea, during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit. This is also remembered as one of the worst meetings between South Korean and U.S. presidents.
The meeting was held in November 2005. It was just two months after the six parties achieved the first breakthrough in resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis, issuing a joint statement on agreed steps toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula “in a phased manner in line with the principle of commitment for commitment, action for action.”
However, soon after the agreement, the U.S. government found out that North Korea was counterfeiting U.S. $100 Federal Reserve notes (“supernotes”) and passing them off in various countries. The Americans also discovered that the Banco Delta Asia bank (BDA) in Macao was a primary money laundering conduit.
This was the key issue during the summit between Roh and Bush. Roh argued that the BDA money laundering issue should not interrupt the negotiations with North Korea, while Bush firmly stated that the U.S. government cannot let go of this issue, since it is related to the U.S. monetary system.
During the meeting, Roh pressed Bush to publicly announce that Washington was willing to normalize relations with Pyongyang if the North abandons its nuclear weapons. Roh brought this issue up again during the press conference, and said Kim Jong-il and the South Korean people want to hear President Bush’s clear stance on officially ending the Korean War. Bush repeated his previous statement saying that the war can only be ended after we remove North Korea’s nuclear weapons in a verifiable way.
Bush’s top advisors at that time, including Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, and Robert Gates, secretary of defense, wrote in their memoirs that the summit was uncomfortable. Gates wrote in his book “Duty” that he concluded Roh is “anti-American and a little bit crazy.” According to Gates, Roh argued that “the biggest national security threat in Asia is the United States and Japan.” Rice described Roh’s actions during the press conference as “bizarre” and “unpredictable,” in her book “Condi Rice, No Higher Honor.”
The summit between conservative Lee Myung-bak and Bush was considered the most successful since the Park Chung-hee and Johnson summit. Lee was among just a few foreign leaders who were invited to Camp David. Lee’s summit with Barack Obama was also successful. Photos of the two leaders having dinner at a Korean restaurant in Virginia were used by the South Korean government to promote their close relationship.
As for the upcoming Moon-Biden summit, prospects are uncertain. The Biden administration has recently completed its review of its North Korea policy, but details have not been released. Moon Jae-in reportedly hopes to convince President Biden to agree to Moon’s approach towards dealing with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator. Analysts offer different predications and only time will tell.
However, reflecting one semi-comical aspect of the upcoming summit, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported that the South Korean government told the U.S. government that they would prefer not to have a hamburger for Moon and Biden’s meal during the upcoming summit. This is interpreted as a move aimed at avoiding a similar situation as with the meeting between President Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga held last month.
During the 20-minute in-person meeting with Biden, accompanied only by an interpreter, Mr. Suga did not touch the hamburger he was served. Some Japanese observers, including former senior officials, made fun of their prime minister for receiving just a burger as a meal, and called it “pathetic.” According to the Chosun Ilbo, the presidential Blue House gave the White House Moon’s preferred menu, but the White House has not responded to its request yet.
