WASHINGTON - Experts are doubtful whether the United States could “guarantee” that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would remain in power if North Korea denuclearizes as President Donald Trump promised during his meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
Despite North Korea’s threat to cancel the summit with the U.S. scheduled for June 12, Trump met with Moon in Washington to prepare for talks with Kim. Speaking with reporters, Trump said that despite the anticipation surrounding the Singapore summit, “there’s a very substantial chance it won’t work out” for June 12.
At the same time, Trump attempted to reassure Kim that the North Korean leader would stay in power if North Korea denuclearizes, indicating the U.S. will not seek a regime change in Pyongyang.
“I will guarantee his safety, yes,” Trump said. “He will be safe. He will be happy.”
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Ken Gause, director at the International Affairs Group at the Center for Naval Analyses, said providing a security guarantee for Kim’s regime would require more than Trump’s promise. The guarantee would need to be buttressed by a signed peace treaty with North Korea, giving the assurance that the U.S. would not attack or invade the country.
“Trump’s word is not enough,” Gause said. “I think [North Korea] will need a peace treaty, ratified by Congress, and a Chinese security guarantee in order to ensure the U.S. doesn’t do regime change in the future.”
For nearly seven decades, South Korea and North Korea have been technically at war after agreeing to a truce to end the hostilities of the Korean War in 1953. Seoul and Pyongyang never signed a formal peace treaty. The U.S., as one of the signatories of the armistice that stopped the fighting but did not end the war, would require ratifying a peace treaty along with North Korea and China, the other signatories of the armistice. Then the by the United Nations. South Korea never signed the armistice but adhered to it.
Robert Gallucci, chief U.S. negotiator during the 1994 North Korean nuclear crisis, also thinks providing security assurance would first require normalizing relations with North Korea through a peace treaty.
“So, the North Korean objective of normalizing the relations between North Korea and the U.S. manifest in a treaty of peace replacing the armistice makes most sense to me,” Gallucci said. “If the U.S. and North Korea have normal relations, then the U.S. will, I think, be more credible, respecting North Korea’s sovereignty and developing the relationship.”
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According to Dennis Wilder, former National Security Council senior director for East Asian affairs during the George W. Bush administration, Trump’s guarantee of Kim’s safety “is very equivalent to what Mr. Tillerson said about Four No’s.’”
In August, while trying to urge North Korea to come to the negotiating table, former secretary of state Rex Tillerson laid out four actions that the U.S. would not take against North Korea. His remarks came after North Korea tested a second intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in defiance of a United Nations ban.
that the U.S. “will not seek a regime change, a collapse of the regime, an accelerated reunification of the peninsula, or an excuse to send [U.S.] military north of the 38th parallel.”
Wilder added that although the U.S. can promise not to attack or invade the country, it cannot protect Kim’s regime against any of the North’s own potential internal conflicts.
“Of course, we can’t guarantee the existence of his government completely,” said Wilder said. “I don’t believe (we are) saying that we will protect Kim against his own people.”
Gary Samore, former White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction in the Obama administration, agreed that the U.S. cannot promise any protection against internal threats that might come with economic reforms as North Koreans become more prosperous, or political reforms that might follow down the road.
“Political threat to Kim Jong Un is not just foreign threat. There are also potential domestic threats,” Samore said. “So, for example, if there are political uprisings or political instability in North Korea, the U.S. can’t guarantee any credibility that we would ensure the survival of Kim’s regime, and North Korea knows this.”
Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said the security guarantee that the U.S. provides to the North should be confined to its own action against the country. “Beyond security guarantees not to attack North Korea or support any efforts at regime change, there is little the U.S. can credibly offer to protect Kim from internal opposition or threats, nor should it,” Manning said.