South Korean President Moon Jae-in Asked Biden To Continue The Progress Of The US-North Korea Relationship That Trump And Kim Built

Trump, Kim, and Moon in the demilitarized zone, Freedom House (Shealah Craighead / White House Official)

JAKARTA - President of South Korea (South Korea) Moon Jae-in advised Joe Biden to hold talks with North Korea (North Korea) to continue the progress that President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have made. Moon's statement was delivered ahead of Biden's inauguration on January 20.

"The inauguration of the Biden administration will mark a turning point for starting a new US-North Korea dialogue, the South-North dialogue, to inherit the achievements made under the Trump administration," Moon said at a New Year's press conference Monday, January 18.

"Dialogue can increase progress if we start over from the Singapore declaration and look for concrete steps in negotiations," Moon continued.

Biden will take office amid a prolonged deadlock in negotiations aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear and missile programs in exchange for US sanctions assistance. Moon himself has offered to be a mediator between Pyongyang and Washington.

Moon said he would seek early opportunities to promote North Korea as Biden's foreign policy priority. This means that he will follow up on the agreement Trump and Kim reached at their first summit in Singapore in 2018.

In a joint statement after the meeting in Singapore, the two leaders pledged to build new relations and work towards denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. However, after Trump and Kim's second summit in Vietnam in 2019, the two did not reach an agreement. The next work-level talks failed.

Kim promised to improve North Korea's nuclear capabilities at last week's ruling Labor Party congress. And that promise, among other things, highlights the need to reopen negotiations for a peace deal, Moon said.

Moon said the issue of the South Korea-US joint military exercise, which Pyongyang has long accused of being a war game, could be discussed by reviving the inter-Korean military panel. Moon also called for a diplomatic solution with Japan to prevent plans to sell Japanese company assets to compensate victims of forced labor, saying it was "undesirable" for bilateral relations.

The two countries are at loggerheads over the legacy of the 1910-1945 Japanese colonial rule. Several former workers have received court orders to confiscate domestic Japanese company property.