MOON JAE-IN is an optimist with an eye for symbolism. When the South Korean president travelled to Berlin in July 2017 to outline his strategy for easing tensions on the Korean peninsula, he insisted on speaking in a place that was associated with German unity. Only two days earlier, Kim Jong Un, the North’s leader, had tested his first intercontinental ballistic missile. But Mr Moon made an impassioned case for peace, hoping the room where officials from East and West Germany had negotiated the unification of their countries in 1990 would convey his dream of a united Korea.
The plan that Mr Moon outlined in Germany was easy to dismiss as rosy-spectacled. It included inviting a North Korean delegation to the Winter Olympics in South Korea, reviving reunions of separated families and possibly arranging a meeting between himself and Mr Kim. If that did not sound wishful enough, he also called on North Korea to give up its nuclear and missile programmes. In the ten months since then, however, much of...Continue reading
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