South Korean officials want Pope Francis to visit North Korea, as the outgoing president pushes for a diplomatic breakthrough with the nuclear-armed neighbor.
“As the pope’s willingness to visit North Korea has been reaffirmed, we hope the North would respond and pave the way for fostering peace on the Korean Peninsula,” South Korean Ministry of Unification spokeswoman Lee Jong-joo told reporters Monday.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in hopes to broker a papal visit to North Korea in a bid to jumpstart peace talks with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. President Joe Biden’s team has evinced less enthusiasm for outreach to Pyongyang, but Moon’s team has touted the prospect of new assistance from the Vatican twice since Friday, when the president met the pope, on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Rome, and gave him a cross made of barbed wire from the demilitarized zone that divides the Korean Peninsula.
“A Bible verse mentions beating swords into plowshares to symbolize turning from war to peace,” Moon said Friday. “In addition to that meaning, the crosses today now contain the desire of many separated families in both Koreas to return to hometowns and meet relatives. They also hold the earnest wish and prayer of the people of the Republic of Korea to end the war for good and for the two Koreas to live in peace from this time forth.”
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Moon’s office quoted Francis as saying, “If you send me an invitation, I will gladly go to help you, for the sake of peace.” The Vatican’s summary of their meeting was less specific, noting that “appreciation was shown for the good bilateral relations between the States and for the positive contribution the Catholic Church offers to society, evoking particular diligence in the promotion of dialogue and reconciliation between Koreans.”
The difference in tone reflects an enthusiasm gap between Moon and the pope, according to Korean Peninsula observers.
“I think the Vatican took note of the suggestion,” Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Bruce Klingner, who specialized in Korean Peninsula issues during a career at the CIA, told the Washington Examiner. “My interpretation is they were polite in responding to the request, but [it’s] likely not carried out, nor is there any indication that the North wants him or would allow him into the country — or sees it as in their interest.”
Moon is in the final months of his presidency and eager for diplomatic success with Kim, who blew up a “liaison office” that was opened after the Singapore Summit between the North Korean leader and then-President Donald Trump. “Our people have always weathered crises through the power of optimism and our positive can-do attitude,” Moon told South Korean lawmakers last week. Three rounds of inter-Korean summits and the first U.S.-North Korea summit ever were brought about, creating a breakthrough for peace. Dialogue still remains incomplete.”
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan has acknowledged that U.S. and South Korean officials disagree about how to approach North Korea.
“We may have somewhat different perspectives on the precise sequence or timing or conditions for different steps, but we are fundamentally aligned on the core strategic initiative here and on the belief that only through diplomacy are we going to really, truly be able to effectively make progress and that that diplomacy has to be effectively paired with deterrence,” Sullivan said last week.
Biden’s team appears hesitant to endorse Moon’s call for a declaration of an end to the war between North Korea and South Korea, as analysts agree that such a statement would play into the Kim regime’s hands.
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“The North Korean government has two abiding objectives, from the international community at this point,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Nicholas Eberstadt said. “One is to undo the U.N. economic sanctions. The other is to, somehow or other, arrange for an end-of-war declaration — which they regard as a prelude to getting American soldiers out of the peninsula and ending the South Korean alliance with the USA.”
