Moon-Biden summit going virtual?

After an official phone call last week, Cheong Wa Dae is pushing for an early summit between President Moon Jae-in and his US counterpart, Joe Biden, in an attempt to breathe life back into the Korean Peninsula peace negotiations, with a virtual meeting emerging as one possibility to advance the date.

During the 32-minute conversation early Thursday morning, the two leaders agreed to hold summit talks as soon as possible once the COVID-19 situation has stabilized, according to Seoul’s readout of the call.

Biden stressed the value of a face-to-face meeting, and Moon responded by saying their eventual summit would have great significance for people in both countries.

South Korea and the US have held summits within six months of a new president being sworn in in either country. Moon held his first meeting with former President Donald Trump in Washington in June 2017, less than two months after Moon took office.

A summit usually involves weeks of working-level talks and numerous adjustments between the two countries. Adding to the complexity this year is the prolonged coronavirus pandemic.

After state visits and summit talks were canceled last year, no clear signs of change are expected in the first half of this year. While the US is still struggling to speed up vaccinations, South Korea has not yet started its vaccine campaign, with the first jabs likely to begin after the Lunar New Year holiday this week.

For now, Moon and Biden will have a chance to meet in person at the G-7 Summit in the UK in June. South Korea is attending the first face-to-face gathering of the seven nations in two years as a guest nation, along with India and Australia.

But critics say the multilateral meeting will offer limited openings for the two leaders to talk in depth on specific issues like North Korea, with other heads of state competing to discuss their priority issues with the new US president.

Most of all, a June summit would be too late for Moon, who is determined to make a breakthrough in the deadlocked denuclearization talks before his term ends in May next year. And by June, Biden’s national security team is likely to have finalized its North Korea policy, leaving little room for discussions between the leaders.

Other occasions, such as a global democracy summit set for the US in April and a P4G green growth summit in Seoul in May, have also been cited as possible opportunities, but they too are multilateral meetings and are likely to be held virtually.

So Cheong Wa Dae is not ruling out holding a virtual summit to advance the date, as both countries are still cautious about holding an in-person meeting involving a large-scale delegation consisting of hundreds of people.

“The leaders reached a consensus to hold a summit as soon as possible but it’s difficult to decide the timing for now. We are discussing diverse ways, including a virtual meeting,” a high-level Cheong Wa Dae official said on condition of anonymity.

Since the breakdown of the second US-North summit in Hanoi in 2019, the diplomatic stalemate between the two Koreas has deepened, with cross-border contacts almost nonexistent for months.

Seoul officials had hopes for the Tokyo Olympics as an occasion to create a peaceful mood between the two Koreas. Three years ago the PyeongChang Winter Olympics led to inter-Korean talks and to the historic summit between the US and North Korea in Singapore in 2018.

With uncertainty continuing to hang over the July Olympics in the Japanese capital, the Korean government has pinned high hopes on the leadership transition in the US.

“We do not need to rush but should remember this is the last one year left for our government,” Moon said at a National Security Council meeting last month upon Biden’s inauguration. “We should play a more active role in improving inter-Korean relations and speeding up the peace process.”

During their first phone call last week, Moon and Biden reaffirmed their shared goal of denuclearizing the peninsula, pledging to draw up a comprehensive joint strategy on North Korea.

Moon stressed joint efforts to advance the peace-building process, while Biden praised Seoul’s efforts so far, adding that it was important for the allies to maintain a shared stance on the matter.

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)