This article was originally published by The Hill
South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s main message to President Biden at their first summit meeting this Friday promises to be disquietingly quixotic. Moon, who has met Kim Jong Un four times, is likely to repeat to Biden — who has yet to meet a North Korean leader — what he stated in a January news conference: Kim “has a clear will for peace, dialogue and denuclearization” in return for a U.S. pledge of “regime security guarantee and normalization of relations.” If this is indeed Moon’s message, the meeting probably will not end well.
The last time a South Korean president who had met the North Korean dictator tried to teach the new United States president the proper path to peace with Pyongyang was 20 years ago. On March 7, 2001, Kim Dae-jung, riding high from winning the Nobel Peace Prize three months before for his pecuniary pilgrimage to Pyongyang, exhorted his host, George W. Bush — not quite 50 days into his presidency and very much disinclined to continue his predecessor’s North Korea placation policy — that the North’s Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Il ( Jong Un’s dad), was to be trusted. That meeting did not end well.
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