French President Does Not Agree with President Moon’s View On Dropping Sanctions

It looks like President Moon’s attempt to lobby European governments to drop North Korean sanctions is not working:

President Moon Jae-in has told French President Emmanuel Macron that North Korea’s denuclearization needs to be stimulated further by easing UN sanctions if the North’s measures to scrap its nuclear program are believed to have reached an irreversible level.

But North Korea has not remotely reached a point where denuclearization is irreversible. It has not even started. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un flatly refused to give the U.S. even a partial inventory of its nuclear facilities and stockpiles when visiting U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pleaded with him, and instead demanded that the U.S. officially declare an end to the Korean War to “build trust.”

The first step to denuclearization must be reporting all nuclear facilities and fissile materials, because how else will anyone know whether North Korea is scrapping anything? This is a no-brainer. Yet the North is vehemently protesting before taking even the first step, claiming that the demand is tantamount to “mafia-like tactics.”

Yet the South Korean president labors under the delusion that North Korea’s denuclearization has progressed significantly. During his summit last month with U.S. President Donald Trump, Moon even said the North’s denuclearization had almost reached an “irreversible” level already. U.S. nuclear experts, by contrast, say Pyongyang’s gestures so far — dismantling a moribund nuclear test site in Punggye-ri and a static missile launch pad it no longer needs — do not qualify as denuclearization at all.

Moon hopes that North Korea’s denuclearization can reach an irreversible level in a few months and is going around the world asking global leaders to stimulate the process by easing sanctions. Macron quite rightly brushed him off, saying sanctions must continue until “concrete denuclearization steps are taken.”  [Chosun Ilbo]

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