Jakarta, Owntalk.co.id – Peace talks on the Korean Peninsula will face a new dynamic soon. Joe Biden is showing signs of taking a different policy than his predecessor, Donald Trump.
During the past campaign, Biden called North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un a “thug” or criminal, and said he was only willing to meet and resume peace talks with North Korea if North Korea agreed to denuclearization.
What Joe Biden delivered ignores the fact that his predecessor, Donald Trump, has noted a number of sweet achievements for improving the country’s relationship with North Korea.
Joe Biden would look unwise if he returned the relationship between the United States and North Korea to the point before a meeting between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump in Singapore in June 2018. However, after the meeting, North Korea showed a cooperative attitude by disarming their nuclear facilities,” said Jakarta State Islamic University (UIN) East Asia political lecturer Syarif Hidayatullah, Teguh Santosa, in a statement received by the editor.
Teguh warned that in the last three years under Donald Trump’s administration, there has been a significant or unimaginable escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
It began with a meeting of Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jaein at the Panmunjom border, on the South Korean side, in April 2018.
On that occasion, Kim Jong Un once invited Moon Jaein to set foot in North Korea.
A month later the two met again in Panmunjom. One of those discussed in the second meeting was Kim Jong Un’s planned meeting with Donald Trump in Singapore in June of that year.
“The Singapore meeting is noteworthy as the historical meeting of the century,” said the former Head of Foreign Affairs of the Indonesian Journalists Association (PWI).
Still in the same year, in September 2018, Moon Jaein visited Pyongyang and Mount Paektu which is sacred to people in both Koreas.
Kim Jong Un even gave Moon Jaein a chance to speak directly to the North Korean people at the First of May Stadium in Pyongyang.
In 2019, Trump and Kim met again. This time in Hanoi, Vietnam. In the meeting, the two leaders did fail to sign a new agreement. But the failure did not bring the two back to back.
To show faith and commitment to maintaining peace on the Korean Peninsula, after attending the G-20 Summit in Osaka, Japan, in June 2019, Donald Trump flew to South Korea and met with Moon Jaein as well as Kim Jong Un in Panmunjom.
“Again this is a historical meeting that we should note in the context of building peace on the Korean Peninsula,” said former Head of Foreign Affairs PP Pemudaha Muhammadiyah again.
As such, Teguh reiterated, it would be unwise for Joe Biden to cancel all of those legacy.
Concerns over Joe Biden’s policies on the Korean Peninsula can also be seen from the statement earlier in the year delivered by President Moon Jaein last Monday (18/1).
He hopes that Joe Biden will continue the peaceful dialogue with North Korea and include that in his administration’s list of foreign policy priorities.
President Moon Jaein also made the Trump-Kim meeting in Singapore a benchmark to be maintained.
North Korea’s stance
Teguh Santosa also explained North Korea’s attitude towards peace on the Korean Peninsula.
“We have listened to the same speech that Kim Jong Un delivered at the 8th Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea last week. Kim Jong Un has conveyed his commitment to improve the country’s relations with other countries, starting from South Korea,” said Teguh Santosa who is also Secretary General of the Indonesia-North Korea Friendship Association.
Supposedly, this sympathetic statement from Kim Jong Un was positively welcomed by the new administration that will be formed in the United States in a few moments.
Joe Biden should be willing to put off the political and ideological “burden” he has.
The political burden is a desire to record things differently than the previous Trump administration. Including, in terms of peace talks with North Korea.
While the ideological burden is the desire of the Democratic Party to peddle Democracy in the United States to countries that they think are undemocratic and underdeveloped.
“Joe Biden should have opened his eyes wide that the democracy they have polled and forced in many countries has created global chaos and chaos. Creating peace is not by forcing other nations and other countries to accept and adopt their way of life and political views,” said Teguh Santosa.
At the end, Teguh Santosa said, from the talks with many parties in North Korea he got the impression that in fact North Korea was not satisfied with the results of the talks that had been done before.
“North Korea feels it has given a lot of things, and has not received any reply. However, they maintained their commitment and did not intend to harm him,” Teguh Santosa said.*(JMSI)