What the New York Times Op-ed means for Koreans

BangbaeKing
Sep 7, 2018 · 2 min read

In less than 48 hours ago, the South Korean president Moon Jae-In sent a special envoy, led by the Chief of National Security, to North Korea. At Pyongyang, the special envoy directly met Kim Jong-Un and handed Kim a personally handwritten letter from Moon. As the peaceful mood that has been maintained ever since the end of the United States and North Korea Summit in June 2018 in Singapore didn’t make any progress recently, it is largely considered that Moon wanted to speed up the process and bring in some results. But in spite of such condition, sending the special envoy was considered extremely abnormal.

Koreans were surprised when Moon suddenly decided to send a special envoy to Kim, sending the envoy in less than 48 hours after the Blue House first announced a plan to send one. Many questioned whether there was any urgent unknown issue that needed to be dealt with between two leaders.

However, unlike what many people suspect, I think the reason behind the sudden dispatch of the deploy is because of Trump. Recently, there is an issue that is quickly spreading in South Korea. As many of us have already heard, an alleged high ranking official from Trump Administration anonymously published an op-ed at the New York Times saying that “like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations”. Such op-ed showed how vulnerable Trump is in his White House. Of course, we already knew that he wasn’t the most conventional president, but we didn’t know that the situation was “this” bad.

The biggest concern for Koreans is this: will Trump survive from this unprecedented political chaos? Even if he does, will he be able to politically survive, well enough to implement and continue the current North Korean policy? If yes, that's great. But if not, then that means that the Korean peninsula reenters into a black hole of the cold war that has lasted for the last seventy years.

Because Trump has constantly been unpredictable and abrupt throughout the entire process of peace-talk, shifting his position from calling Kim Jong-Un from a madman to a smart leader, no one, not even the high-ranking officials at the Blue House, are certain about the future. The fact that there is such a lack of trust and consistency in America’s current policy and between the U.S., South Korea, and North Korea is making hard for everyone who is involved in it.

Many Koreans who I have personally met say that this would be the last chance for us to establish peace with North Korea. Two previous presidents who have attempted to do so all failed. Will the current peace mood continue even after Trump loses his authority? Will it continue even after he doesn’t get reelected?