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As Trump goes soft on North Korea, the Democrats are outflanking him

BEFORE DONALD TRUMP FELL IN LOVE WITH KIM JONG-UN, Washington had found an almost unprecedented amount of bipartisan unity around the need to enforce sanctions until Kim Jong-un had irreversibly begun to dismantle his weapons of mass destruction and end his crimes against humanity. Most sensible people who send representatives to Congress believe in concepts like evil and pathological mendacity. Yet these concepts are anathema to the twenty percent of the population on the left end of the political Bell Curve”and to the current South Korean government, the current American President, a disproportionate number of journalists, and pro-“engagement” scholars in Northwest DC whose opinions sensible folk began to discount in the late 1990s. That’s why it’s refreshing to see the new Speaker of the House express far more clear-eyed views to members of South Korea’s left-leaning ruling party than it may have expected.

A South Korean delegation of lawmakers visiting Washington this week for talks with U.S. officials ahead of the second U.S.-North summit clashed with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over Pyongyang’s true intentions after she accused the North of pursuing South Korea’s “demilitarization.”

Members of the delegation said at a briefing for South Korean media outlets that Pelosi, in a closed-door meeting Tuesday, asked the group what Seoul expected from the upcoming summit, which is set to take place in Hanoi, Vietnam Feb. 27 and 28.

When Rep. Chung Dong-young of the minor leftist Party for Democracy and Peace replied that forging ties with the North like the United States did with Vietnam would help the United States “expand its national interest,” Pelosi shot back that she doesn’t trust the North.

Pelosi, according to the South Korean lawmakers Tuesday, then recounted her experience visiting the North in 1997 with members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

She said the poverty she witnessed in the North Korean people’s lives was unimaginable. Since then, Pelosi said, she couldn’t trust the Pyongyang regime.

Pelosi’s meeting with the delegation was initially scheduled to run for 30 minutes but lasted for over an hour as the talks grew intense. [Joongang Ilbo]

Like me, Pelosi is skeptical of what Trump achieved at Singapore, calling it “nothing but a show.” She wants to see proof that Pyongyang is denuclearizing before she’ll believe it. In fact, there’s more evidence of the very opposite of this. But with mainstream Republicans stuck between their unstated skepticism and the fear of getting into a Twitter spat with Trump, the Democrats have a unique opportunity to steal the “tough on North Korea” mantle. As the expression goes, any port in a storm. So again, our notions of “left” and “right” are inverted, as a rift widens between Korea’s nationalist left and America’s liberal left. Taro O notes that the visiting delegation’s gift to Pelosi was a thinly veiled diss, or at least a revival of the Korean left’s “balancer” diplomacy:

Moon Hee-sang, the current speaker of the South Korean National Assembly, met with the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on February 12, 2019 and gave her an unusual gift: a scroll written in Chinese. Koreans pronounce the four large Chinese characters in the middle as “Man Jeol Pil Dong.” It means China’s Yellow River may wind in different directions, but in the end, it flows east.

“It was a favorite phrase used by Koreans devoted to China during Chosun dynasty. It indicates yearning for China.” said Jeong Kyu-jae, a journalist and CEO of PennMike. (1:35) Jeong paraphrased “all roads lead to Rome,” by saying it means “all roads lead to China.” (1:45) Jeong lamented that American may think South Korea does not have its own writing system Hangul and that South Korea may be thought of as a vassal state (of China). (0:33)

Apparently, Moon Hee-sang wrote it himself as it has his name written on the left side in Chinese. It is casually addressed “Dear Pelosi” on the right side. [Tara O]

Decide for yourself:

I almost recognize her expression.

One advantage of having friends who work on the Hill or interact with it is that you hear things that either add to or subtract from the truth or falsity of public reports. A few months ago, a source I trust told me how in a meeting between members of Congress and a visiting South Korean delegation, the Koreans lobbied for the relaxation of sanctions to allow more “engagement” projects like Kaesong, and it was a very liberal Senator who was the most vocally skeptical and opposed.

Since then, Bob Menendez (D, NJ) and Ted Cruz (R, TX) have also weighed in. Cruz recently joined the Foreign Relations Committee, and yes, my liberal readers absolutely loathe him, but Cruz is highly intelligent and one of Congress’s smartest and toughest members on the topic of North Korea. He also holds a seat on the Judiciary Committee. Last week, he and Menendez (another favorite of mine, because he comes to hearings well-prepared to ask tough questions) co-signed this letter to the South Korean Ambassador, urging his government not to reopen Kaesong or Kumgang, or otherwise violate UN sanctions until Pyongyang disarms. Yonhap, probably because it recently became The Hankyoreh, ignored the letter, but Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin didn’t.

In the run-up to the second summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un, the South Korean government is rushing ahead to prematurely relax pressure on North Korea, which could undermine our last chance to compel real denuclearization. The Trump administration risks following Seoul down this ill-advised path.

When the Trump team began its North Korea diplomacy, it assured the American public it would not repeat past mistakes. Yet a familiar pattern is repeating itself: The United States is getting roped into an unending, unclear process of gradual arms control negotiations with Pyongyang that has only a slim chance of persuading Kim to give up all his nukes ” which was supposed to be the plan. [WaPo]

Both my behind-the-scenes experiences on the Hill and facts that are a matter of public knowledge suggest that the Democratic mainstream began taking a harder line against Pyongyang even before Barack Obama left office. That shift came into the open after Trump’s inauguration. When Trump was threatening “fire and fury,” some liberals pushed for tougher sanctions enforcement as an argument against war. For example, months before Singapore, liberal Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen introduced this very tough, very smart sanctions bill. It deserves a fresh look in this Congress, perhaps in some combination with Senator Gardner’s LEED Act.

It’s a similar story on human rights. Elliot Engel, the New York Democrat who now heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, recently said that “a change of the North Korean regime is the best way to defend the human rights of North Korean people.” One of the leading lights of Congress’s freshman class, Tom Malinowski, headed the DC office of Human Rights Watch before President Obama appointed him to a senior State Department post. There, he led the behind-the-scenes push to designate Kim Jong-un for crimes against humanity. Malinowski also advocates stepping up our game on broadcasting and information operations.

And to think that a year ago, I privately worried that by meeting with North Korean defectors and making their rights his cause, Donald Trump would forever alienate liberals from that cause by association. Maybe this is the silver lining of Trump’s new love affair with Kim Jong-un; he stains whoever he embraces. Given the choice, I’d rather have conscientious liberals on my side than Donald Trump. In the bizarre political times in which we live, Trump has the support of an unstable alliance of right-wing loyalists and pro-Pyongyang tankies, who’ll go right back to hating him as soon as he stops giving Kim Jong-un whatever he wants. Meanwhile, centrists in both parties see nothing good coming from the leaders in Pyongyang, Seoul, or Washington. And as long as the current rulers are in power in those places, it will be our curse to live in interesting times.

When (not if) Trump’s summitry with Kim Jong-un fails to make us any safer, we’ll at least have this consolation: Trump’s legacy will be to help liberals see what a truly awful regime Pyongyang is, if only because Donald Trump embraced it.

[See that op-ed at 10:18? Does it look familiar?]

If the die-hard Trumpers and paleocons continue to consolidate their control over the GOP, the Republicans stand to get outflanked as soft on North Korea. That’s a bad place to be with a historically unpopular regime that is guaranteed to renege on its promises, or whatever Trump imagines those to be. Stranger things have happened on a planet whose magnetic field reversed its polarity a mere 41,000 years ago.

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