authoritarian government in the 1970s and was arrested. A former special forces paratrooper and a human rights lawyer with a “distinctly nerdy style,” according to a colleague, he became a top aide to President Roh Moo-hyun from 2003 to 2008. Moon had worked his way to the top to become president in 2017. Sitting across from him in a forest glade was Kim, who was born into privilege with access to extreme wealth and power. He had murdered two close relatives and was the torchbearer for a decades-old repressive regime, with a demonstrated track record of torture and rape and use of slave labor, including the exploitation of children. He was also designated by the United States as a violator of human rights in 2016.
They were smiling and nodding at each other, deep in conversation. Through the course of the summit, they received flowers from two South Korean children, planted a memorial tree, and had dinner together. Kim even brought a noodle-making machine with him and a top chef from a Pyongyang restaurant—North Korea touts its naengmyun, a cold buckwheat noodle dish—and told Moon, “There is a lot of attention on our dinner menu for tonight, so I brought Pyongyang naengmyun for you from a long way.” The picture of the two leaders slurping the beloved noodle dish lit up South Korean social media. Inspired South Koreans waxed poetic about the noodles, and a cold-noodle mania swept the country, with long lines forming outside restaurants that served the dish. Kim and Moon even held hands at one point and capped off the summit by watching a concert. The cognitive dissonance was overwhelming.
Kim’s metamorphosis had begun.
A THAW AT THE WINTER OLYMPICS
Kim Jong Un’s image rehabilitation began with his New Year’s address, the same speech in which he barked about the “nuclear button” on his desk, celebrated North Korea’s “powerful nuclear deterrent,” and uttered not-so-veiled hints about being able to hit the United States, given the regime’s professed successes in developing intercontinental ballistic missiles during the previous year. But he also expressed a desire to improve ties to South Korea, which had been frozen at least since he had taken over, and made his priorities the nuclear weapons program and consolidating power rather than forging international relations. Not that the previous South Korean presidents, conservatives Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, were willing to bow in the least to Kim’s provocative actions, especially in light of North Korea’s deadly attacks in 2010, scores of missile tests, and multiple nuclear tests, in addition to threats about hitting the Blue House with a missile and schoolyard name-calling.
But in Moon, a progressive who became president after a yearlong series of massive popular protests that ousted Park, Kim finally had a sympathetic ear in the South Korean Blue House. Moon came into office promising to put Seoul in the “driver’s seat of the Korean Peninsula,” an approach consistent with South Korean progressives’ efforts over decades to seek more autonomy from the United States, especially regarding North Korea policy, a position that would invite charges of anti-Americanism and appeasement toward Pyongyang. Though North Korea’s belligerence and refusal to engage and Kim’s confrontation with Trump left him with little choice but to endorse U.N. sanctions and U.S. efforts at maximum pressure, including more robust military drills and demonstrations, Moon consistently offered North Korea an exit ramp. Following Trump’s “fire and fury” comments in August, President Moon in a televised address delivered a blunt message: “Only [South Korea] can make the decision for military action on the Korean Peninsula.” He said that he would support the U.S. policy on economic and diplomatic isolation of North Korea, but “the purpose of enhanced sanctions and pressure against the North is not to heighten military tensions but to bring it back to the negotiating table.”
A month later, amid the name-calling between Kim and Trump, Trump’s threats to “totally destroy” North Korea, and the North Korean foreign minister’s statement warning about a possible hydrogen bomb test over the Pacific Ocean in late September, Moon tried to tame tensions during his own U.N. General Assembly speech. “Finding a fundamental way to end this vicious circle of provocations and sanctions is the most important task confronting the UN,” he declared. “We will not pursue any form of unification by absorption nor artificial unification. We are ready to help North Korea with the international community if it decides to stand at the right side of history.” Moon faced the challenge of balancing his alliance with