With President Donald Trump having threatened to unleash fire and fury on North Korea just five months ago, did we ever think we would see North and South Korea marching together at the opening ceremony of the Pyeongchang Olympics under a unification flag on February 9? With North Korea launching one nuclear test after another, any type of détente on the peninsula seemed impossible.
The fast pace with which North Korea has decided to engage with the South on participation in the Games, and the message of a united Korea it seeks to portray are unprecedented.
While the US might think the bite of the harshest sanctions the UN has ever imposed on a member state may have brought about a shift in approach, there is another possible explanation.
North Korea may have reached a level of confidence that it is now a nuclear state. If it feels its nuclear capacity is sufficient to deter any Western efforts at regime change, so it does not end up like Iraq or Libya, then it may feel it can afford to throw
an olive branch towards the South.
For the first time since December 2015, North and South Korea held talks at ministerial level on January 9 in the small village of Panmunjom in the demilitarised zone. The historic meeting room, known as the Joint Security Area conference room, sits right on the 38th parallel, with one side of the table in North Korea and the other in South Korea.
There have been three meetings to date, the most recent this week which decided that North Korean athletes would participate in four sports - pair figure skating, alpine and cross-country skiing, and women’s ice hockey. Perhaps most significant is the fact that both sides have agreed to present a unified women’s ice hockey team, which is a historic first. North Korea will also send a 550-strong delegation which includes a 230-person cheering squad, which is expected to be an army of beauties.
The significance of North Korea’s willingness to engage needs to be encouraged as a matter of priority. American megaphone diplomacy that continues condemning the North and ignores the constructive nature of recent developments is of no help at all. The recent public statements of senior South Korean officials promoting even greater pressure on the North also does nothing to build trust with the North at a time when they supposedly want to pursue a political dialogue with them following the Olympics.
The only chance for peace now is to focus on confidence building measures between the two sides, not inflammatory statements.
For at least the period of the Olympics, the South has agreed to postpone its joint annual military drills with the US, which is one of the issues that serves as a constant irritant to the North. Future confidence-building measures might include putting such military exercises on hold longer term while the prospect of political dialogue is explored. The North could halt its nuclear tests to give dialogue a chance.
South Korea has the most progressive president in decades in Moon Jae-in, who happens to be a president the North believes they can talk to. The opportunity should not be squandered by flattering the Americans about how effective their sanctions regime is.
The best hope for the Korean peninsula is for both sides to focus on finding a solution between themselves, void of any interference from outside actors.
South Africa did it, which proves the impossible can sometimes be possible.
The North still wants to talk to the South about reunification under the concept of one country, two governments and two political systems. This confederal arrangement was a topic of discussion during the 2000 and 2007 summits between the North and South that took place under left-wing South Korean administrations. But the discussions around reunification fell by the wayside with the election of the right wing government in South Korea.
Whether the idea of one country, two political systems is ideal or not, surely most would agree that it would be a far better situation than the region finds itself in now, possibly on the brink of a nuclear conflagration.
For the Americans, the current discussions between North and South Korea are nothing more than ensuring the security of the Olympic games through the North’s participation.
But for those who genuinely seek peace it is a whole lot more than that. It desperately needs to be the start of détente for the 1 million Koreans who want the reunification of their families, and for the masses that see themselves as one people, with one language, one culture and one food.
* Ebrahim is Group Foreign Editor of Independent Media.