Opinion | South Korea Wants to Declare Peace—Without Peace

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From WSJopinion: Empty words won’t move the peninsula any closer to peace, writes Nicholas Eberstadt. An end-of-war declaration would help the Kim Jong Un regime get back on its feet and back to its familiar menacing playbook.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un prepares to shake hands with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Panmunjom on the Korean border, April 27, 2018.South Korea’s “Sunshiners” in President Moon Jae-in’s administration have nothing to show for years of solicitousness to, and Mr. Moon’s presidency is nearing its end. So they are doubling down, trying to stage a unilateral “end of war“ declaration—a bit of diplomatic theater asserting the Korean War is formally over, no matter that the North says.

In Sunshine doctrine—a theory of international relations—the signing of “peace declarations” has been a fixation for decades. For true believers, these declarations are talismanic: Somehow they will end peninsular hostilities. Believers never lose faith when the magic fails to work. Nowadays, Kim Jong Un won’t talk to Mr. Moon about a peace declaration—or anything else. So Mr. Moon has pivoted and is now pressuring the U.S. to provide him with a joint declaration instead.

By signaling that things aren’t as bad as we thought with the North, the declaration also stands to set back the international North Korea human-rights movement. And no matter how much the alliance tries to spin the declaration, Pyongyang can bank on an international law-enforcement break: for cybercrime, terror-network commerce and other illicit financial operations.

As soon as that document is signed, the U.N. Command—the multilateral defense structure that still includes other international forces in Korean peacekeeping—would be doomed to vanish, as the North has long wished. The U.S.-South Korean alliance would come under greater scrutiny in America. After all, isn’t the Korean conflict the original “endless war”?

 

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