South Korea Concerned with Removal of Denuclearization from DNC Platform

The Korea Times on Tuesday reported some consternation in Seoul over the mysterious disappearance of “denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula” from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) platform.

South Korean analysts pored over the Democrat’s platform when it was released ahead of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) that began on Monday in Chicago, Illinois, and while they found South Korea referenced seven times and North Korea six, they could find no trace of the 2020 Biden-Harris platform’s commitment to “building a sustained, coordinated diplomatic campaign to advance the longer-term goal of denuclearization.”

The Democrat platform’s references to the Korean Peninsula came in the course of advocating “strengthened trilateral cooperation” between the U.S., South Korea, and Japan, and complaining about former president Donald Trump supposedly “embarrassing the U.S. on the global stage” by “flattering North Korean leader Kim Jong-un” by sending him “love letters.”

WATCH — Kim Jong Un Supervises Tests of “Super-Large” Rocket Launchers Near Pyongyang:

The Korea Times quoted South Korean analysts who read a great deal into the disappearance of the “denuclearization” platform plank:

Some analysts have warned that this shift reflects a growing consensus among Democrats that managing North Korea’s nuclear capabilities through a disarmament deal might be more pragmatic than pursuing the increasingly elusive goal of complete denuclearization.

“Denuclearization is becoming more of a rhetorical stance in the U.S. not just among Republicans but also Democrats,” said Cho Han-bum, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, a state-funded think tank.

“After the U.S. presidential elections, regardless of which party wins, we may see Washington shift toward disarmament negotiations to break the stalemate. The focus of their goal would be to freeze North Korea’s nuclear weapons so they do not pose direct threats to the U.S.”

Other analysts worried that both American parties are giving up on denuclearization as “unrealistic,” or a goal that no longer merits large investments of U.S. political capital when so many other foreign and domestic crises are brewing.

WATCH — White House: We’re Not Implementing North Korea Sanctions as Strongly as We Could:

Some took it as a harbinger of U.S. disconnect when outgoing President Joe Biden failed to appoint a successor to his special representative to North Korea, Jung Pak, when she resigned in July. In fact, Biden never really replaced Pak’s predecessor Sung Kim, who retired in 2023. Pak stepped into the vacancy in a diminished role with a different title while holding down another job at the State Department.

A few other South Korean commentators sought to minimize the impact of the Democrat platform change, insisting that Harris must still understand the importance of denuclearization, and has no good reason for making sweeping changes to Joe Biden’s Korea policies.

It does not seem to have occurred to any of these South Korean experts that the Democratic Party platform might have been written hastily and without great attention to detail — the platform still names Joe Biden as the 2024 candidate in several places — so some of the party’s positions on South Korea might have been left out by accident.