Victor Cha, Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said Wednesday that greater uncertainty would cloud a US-South Korea trade deal if the US Supreme Court rules the Trump administration's tariff policy unlawful. [Yonhap]
Victor Cha, Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said Wednesday that greater uncertainty would cloud a US-South Korea trade deal if the US Supreme Court rules the Trump administration's tariff policy unlawful. [Yonhap]

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un may seek a summit with US President Donald Trump after the American midterm elections in November, leveraging Trump's desire for a Nobel Peace Prize to advance discussions on a peace treaty and a halt to joint military exercises — all while pushing Washington toward de facto recognition of North Korea as a nuclear-armed state, according to a new analysis.

Victor Cha, Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), laid out the scenario in an analysis published Wednesday on the CSIS website, titled "After Iran: Scenarios for a Trump-Kim Summit Resumption." Cha argued that a North Korea-US summit could reconvene if Kim opts for a "revisionist" strategy that breaks from conventional expectations.

"If Kim Jong-un takes a revisionist posture, he could target a meeting with Trump to reaffirm the basic principles of the Singapore joint declaration adopted at the first North Korea-US summit in 2018," Cha said.

He pointed to the period after the November midterm elections as the most likely window for such a summit, adding that Kim's incentive to pursue talks would grow particularly if the Republican Party suffers a defeat.

Even if a summit were to take place, Cha said the two leaders would more likely agree on broad principles than enter detailed denuclearization negotiations, leaving the specifics to working-level teams on both sides over the following six months.

The Singapore joint declaration contained four elements: establishing a new North Korea-US relationship, building a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, working toward the peninsula's complete denuclearization, and recovering the remains of prisoners of war and missing personnel.

Based on North Korea's current external behavior, most observers consider a North Korea-US summit unlikely. Pyongyang has significantly deepened its military and economic ties with Russia through its troop deployments to Ukraine and has been expanding trade cooperation with China.

Cha noted, however, that Kim has defied conventional wisdom before. The most striking example, he said, was North Korea's rapid pivot toward Russia through the Ukraine war — contrary to widespread expectations after the COVID-19 pandemic that Pyongyang would prioritize normalizing trade with China.

If Kim's overriding goal is to consolidate North Korea's status as a nuclear-armed state, Cha argued, he could also exploit the opportunity of direct diplomacy with Trump toward that end.

Cha also said Kim has room to work with Trump's own ambiguous stance on North Korea's nuclear status. While Trump has maintained denuclearization as a stated US policy goal, he has at times referred to North Korea as a "nuclear power," signaling a fluid attitude toward the issue.

"Kim Jong-un can seize an opportunity in re-engaging with Trump," Cha said.

Cha also assessed that the US-Iran war would have given North Korea a chance to study how Trump approaches diplomacy and negotiations.

"In America's post-diplomacy world, major outcomes take on a grand form but come with only promises of follow-on negotiations and no real prospect of an actual agreement," Cha said.

He added that North Korea had drawn another lesson: that the best way to manage an unpredictable Trump who favors the use of military force is to maintain contact. Pyongyang may have concluded that sustaining direct leader-to-leader engagement — rather than keeping its distance — is in fact a tool for managing the risk of military confrontation.

Cha also raised the possibility that, if a summit does take place, Kim would actively exploit Trump's interest in winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

"Kim Jong-un will appeal to Trump's Nobel Peace Prize legacy-building and steer the conversation toward topics such as a peace treaty, a halt to US military exercises, and an end to hostile relations," Cha said.

He added that even without immediate tangible results, a summit would yield considerable strategic gains for North Korea. Discussing nuclear arms reduction or a peace regime with a US president would in itself move Pyongyang closer to its long-sought goal of securing de facto American recognition of its nuclear-armed status.

Cha also raised the possibility that Kim's "revisionist diplomacy" could extend to a North Korea-Japan summit with Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. North Korea could pursue direct leader-level diplomacy with Japan as well as the United States, he said, as a strategy to undermine the trilateral cooperation framework among South Korea, the US and Japan.

Cha drew a line, however, on the prospect of a North Korea-US summit leading to a resumption of inter-Korean dialogue.

Rather than responding to the "peaceful coexistence" proposal put forward by the Lee Jae-myung government, Cha said "a revisionist diplomatic strategy of bypassing Seoul to approach Washington and Tokyo would be the most attractive option for North Korea."

Cha also suggested that China would likely support, rather than oppose, a resumption of North Korea-US summit diplomacy — calculating that backing Trump-Kim engagement would allow Beijing to send a friendly signal to Trump while simultaneously checking the expansion of Russia's influence over North Korea.


sjy@heraldcorp.com