North Korean parade a tricky prelude to inter-Korean summit

In this April 15, 2017 file photo, a submarine missile is paraded across Kim Il Sung Square during a military parade in Pyongyang, North Korea, to celebrate the 105th birth anniversary of Kim Il Sung, the country’s late founder and grandfather of current ruler Kim Jong Un.  AP

SEOUL, South Korea — As North Korea prepares for a massive parade Sunday featuring thousands of goose-stepping soldiers and lots of scary-looking missiles, some potentially capable of reaching the US mainland, worry is rising in South Korea that a tentative, hard-won detente is starting to slip away.

An authoritarian nation obsessed with big milestones, North Korea will use the celebration for the 70th anniversary of its national founding to glorify Kim Jong Un as a leader who’s standing up for a powerful nation surrounded by enemies.

Kim will also welcome a delegate from his most important ally, senior Chinese official Li Zhanshu, the third-ranking official of the country’s ruling party and head of its rubberstamp parliament, whose presence at the parade would underscore Beijing’s role as a major player in international efforts to solve the nuclear crisis.

That’s a role South Korean President Moon Jae-in covets, and one of several reasons why the pressure will be intense when he travels to North Korea later this month to meet with Kim.

Moon, who previously held summits with Kim in April and May, will arrive in Pyongyang with dual goals: speeding up inter-Korean engagement and breaking an impasse in nuclear negotiations between North Korea and the United States.

It won’t be easy.

The current stalemate between Washington and Pyongyang has raised fundamental questions about Kim’s supposed willingness to abandon his nukes, questions that were initially brushed aside amid the soaring, and so far largely empty, rhetoric surrounding a June summit between Kim and President Donald Trump that saw very little substance in its wake.

If Moon fails at his upcoming meeting with Kim, he may face a serious political dilemma: whether to continue to engage the North or join another US-led high-pressure campaign against Pyongyang.

“It’s worth the gamble for Moon to make bold demands to try to get North Korea back on track in nuclear negotiations with the United States, but current signs indicate the North won’t budge,” said Choi Kang, vice president of Seoul’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies. /ee