A hopeful development in this regard has been the tentative movement toward rapprochement between the governments of the two Koreas. Choe Sang-Hun writes in "Kim Jong-un Invites South Korean Leader to North for Summit Meeting":
North and South Korea marched under one flag at the Olympics’ opening ceremony. Some South Koreans hope it is a symbol of a peaceful unification. Others fear it is an omen of larger political ambitions of the North.
Mr. Pence, by contrast, avoided speaking with North Korean officials on Friday, and he and his wife did not stand, as most spectators did, when the athletes from both Koreas marched together under a flag representing a unified Korea. Earlier Friday, Mr. Pence met with defectors from the North and invited them to tell their stories of repression under Pyongyang.
Mr. Moon would like to bring both North Korea and the United States to the negotiating table. China has suggested that talks could start if the United States suspended its regular joint military exercises with South Korea, and if North Korea reciprocated by shelving nuclear and missile tests.
But both sides have held their ground. North Korea has said that its nuclear weapons are not for bargaining away. In a speech that Mr. Kim gave on New Year’s Day, in which he first raised the possibility of the North participating in the Olympics, he vowed to “mass-produce” nuclear weapons and missiles.
Mr. Pence reiterated on Friday that the North must “put denuclearization on the table and take concrete steps with the world community to dismantle, permanently and irreversibly, their nuclear and ballistic missile programs.”
“Then, and only then, will the world community consider negotiating and making changes in the sanctions regime that’s placed on them today,” Mr. Pence said after a meeting with Mr. Moon.
“Kim Jong-un has no intention of giving up his nuclear weapons,” said Cheon Seong-whun, a former presidential secretary for security strategy and now a visiting research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul. “With his summit proposal, he seeks to incite friction between Seoul and Washington by widening their policy gap.”
Mr. Moon cannot rush for a summit meeting given Washington’s deep misgivings and because “South Koreans are not as enthused about another summit meeting with North Korea as they used to,” Mr. Cheon added.
A senior analyst at the Sejong Institute in South Korea, Cheong Seong-chang, agreed that Mr. Kim’s latest overtures were aimed at easing its isolation and the impact of sanctions. But South Korea also needed to ease tensions, especially given Mr. Trump’s threat to take a military option, he said.
“It will not be wise for President Moon to reject dialogue with the North and do nothing but stick to sanctions for the sake of the alliance with the United States,” Mr. Cheong said. “South Korea will suffer the most if miscalculation or hostility drives the North and the United States into an armed clash.”
The main political opposition, the conservative Liberty Korea Party, warned that Mr. Moon was duped by the North’s “false peace offensives.” But Mr. Moon’s governing Democratic Party heartily welcomed the prospect of an inter-Korean summit meeting.
A party spokeswoman, Kim Hyo-eun, went so far as to call for the reopening of a joint factory park in the North Korean town of Kaesong. Mr. Moon’s conservative and impeached predecessor, President Park Geun-hye, shut down the park two years ago. Washington says that the reopening of the park would violate sanctions — a concern Mr. Moon shared.
The United States has also opposed suspending its joint military exercises with the South, though it agreed to delay drills scheduled for February until the Olympics are over. Shinzo Abe, the prime minister of Japan, asked Mr. Moon on Friday to hold the exercises soon after the Games end, but Mr. Moon told Mr. Abe not to meddle in South Korea’s “sovereignty and internal affairs,” South Korean officials said.
On Saturday, members of the small progressive Minjung Party held a rally near an Olympic site, condemning Mr. Pence and Mr. Abe for committing “diplomatic discourtesy” and “ruining South Korea’s party.”It's not been a good games so far for the United States and Japan. NBC shit-canned an analyst after he praised Japan, saying “Every Korean will tell you that Japan is a cultural and technical and economic example that has been so important to their own transformation.”
I guess the analyst doesn't read newspapers.
U.S. policy on North Korea is geared toward conflict. The two options boil down to harsh sanctions and first strike, as Ben Norton of FAIR reports in "Vox’s US Government-Linked Experts Present Options for Korea: Sanctions or War."
These two options don't offer much to the Korean people. So expect Moon to keep moving toward peace. The U.S. no doubt would love the conservatives to return to power. But that's not going to happen in the near future, particularly now that Samsung scion Jay H. Lee got a get-out-of-jail prematurely card. It was a corruption scandal involving Park Geun-hye and Samsung that allowed Moon to enter the Blue House on a wave of people power. Elections do matter.
