Korea: ‘A Telling Contrast’

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Maybe it pays — once in a while — to threaten to totally destroy a communist country. That’s what we kept thinking as we watched the Singapore summit. It’s not a year, nay, nine months since President Trump told the United Nations that America was prepared to “totally destroy” the communistic Hermit Kingdom. Was that the essential step in incenting “Rocket Man” into a parley about peace?

In raising the question we don’t mean to suggest that peace with the North Korean tyranny would be a good thing. Free Korea objected to — and refused to sign — the armistice that, in 1953, brought a halt to the fighting on the peninsula. History has stubbornly refused to disclose what would have happened had we stuck with the fight. At least we didn’t abandon Korea, like, say, we did Free Vietnam.

The point we kept thinking of during the Singapore sitdown is what the New York Times called “a telling contrast” between Mr. Trump and his predecessor, President Obama, who favored such soothing language when he addressed the United Nations. That strategy cut no ice with the frozen North. Mr. Trump’s tactics brought us to the smiling handshake and the pat on Mr. Kim’s back and the opening of what are mooted to be long talks.

While Messrs. Trump and Kim were meeting, President Obama’s deputy state secretary, Antony Blinken, published a piece in the Times suggesting that the “best model” for a nuclear deal with Korea would be Iran. We have a great regard for Mr. Blinken, a friend over the years. What stands out for us in respect of the Iran deal and Korea, though, are the differences that obtain in the two situations.

For one thing, the American ally most directly in the crosshairs of Iran, Israel, objected strongly to the articles of appeasement Secretary of State Kerry negotiated with the Iranian camarilla. So did the United States Congress. Both the Senate and the House opposed the appeasement “overwhelmingly,” to use the adverb the New York Times used to describe their degree of opposition.

Talk about telling contrasts. What a difference obtains in Korea. The American ally most directly in the crosshairs of North Korea is South Korea. It is tickled pink (no pun intended) over Mr. Trump’s diplomacy. Democratic South Korea even helped broker the talks. Also happy, as far as we can tell, is the American Congress. If there are major objections in either party, they haven’t been plainly put.

Plus, too, the Korean talks aren’t hobbled by the confounded Europeans. Mr. Kerry was up to his eyeballs with Europeans, who are experts at appeasement. Mr. Trump doesn’t have the same problem; he made a point of rebuffing the Europeans at the G-7 parley, just before taking off for Singapore. The New York Times reckons he kicked a friend to impress an enemy, but he made his point.

For the Sun’s part, we’re reserved on the Korea talks. We don’t like that President Park Geun-hye of South Korea now sits in prison. She was the freely elected hardliner who was impeached for a corruption scheme, which precipitated the election of the left-wing regime that undertook the outreach to Kim Jong Un. The most telling contrast is that peace isn’t made by left-wingers talking with our enemies.


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