Recently it has been reported that:
In a lot of social media (here, here and here) I have seen people attributing this breakthrough to work and "negotiating skill" of Donald Trump.
Is there any basis to these claims? How much influence has Donald Trump had on this event?
According to South Korea's National Security Chief, Chung Eui-yong, speaking to the press after a meeting about North Korea with President Trump on March 08, 2018:
"I explained to President Trump that his leadership and his maximum pressure policy, together with international solidarity, brought us to this juncture. I expressed President Moon Jae-in’s personal gratitude for President Trump’s leadership."
Full transcript: South Korea official's speech on Trump-North Korea leader meeting by May
According to South Korea's Foreign Minister, Kang Kyung-wha, speaking to CNN on April 26, 2018:
South Korea's foreign minister has said she believes President Donald Trump is largely responsible for bringing North Korean leader Kim Jong-un to the negotiating table.
Speaking ahead of Friday's historic summit between the leaders of North and South Korea, Kang Kyung-wha told CNN that the US President had played a significant role in bringing the two sides together.
"Clearly, credit goes to President Trump," Kang told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in Seoul. "He's been determined to come to grips with this from day one."
CNN report: South Korea credits Trump for opening door to talks with North
According to the President of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, as reported by the BBC on April 27, 2018:
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said publicly too that President Trump deserved big credit for bringing about talks to discuss peace with the North. "It could be a resulting work of the US-led sanctions and pressure."
BBC report: Does Trump deserve the credit for peace talks with North Korea?
President Moon went further, saying that President Trump should receive the Nobel Peace Prize:
Donald Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to unify Korea, the South Korean President has reportedly suggested.
"President Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize. What we need is only peace," Mr Moon told a meeting of senior secretaries, according to an official who briefed media.
In floating the idea of a Trump Nobel, Mr Moon was responding to a comment by Lee Hee-ho, the widow of late South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.
She said Mr Moon deserved to win the prize in recognition of his peace efforts, leading him to say Mr Trump should get it.
Sky News report: Donald Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, says South Korea's President
New York Times report: A Trump Nobel Peace Prize? South Korea’s Leader Likes the Idea
According to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in a joint press conference with President Trump on April 27, 2018:
"Today, we meet at a point in time where it has become very clear that the strength of the American president, where he really saw to it that the sanctions against North Korea are respected, has opened new possibilities, opened new ways."
CNBC report: Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel hold joint press conference
Trump has definitely had some influence, perhaps by accident or perhaps by design. Because of his nature and our collective inability to understand Kim Jong Un's inner thinking, it's hard to say for certain.
My opinion is that most of the credit for the historic diplomatic breakthrough probably goes to China and Xi Jinping. Kim recently travelled to China in March, which I suspect is when this detente was decided.
Trump definitely deserves credit for creating the circumstances in which China would feel the need to pressure North Korea towards a more peaceful path, both through his public statements and the current strained trade relations between the U.S. and China, since China may believe that by stepping down the Korean conflict they could ease some of the rhetoric coming from the administration. It could also be absolutely true that Kim felt pressure from Trump directly due to his style of conducting international relations, but unless he confirms it this point isn't known.
According to Chinese scientists, the last nuclear test in North Korea provoked the collapse of the mountain under which the testing base was built, basically crushing it. Kim's surprising change of policy and his statement about ending nuclear tests would then likely be due to his physical incapacity to pursue them.
In case this get confirmed, one could safely consider that Trump's determination has nothing to do with it, unless we suppose that willpower can literally move mountains.
According to commentator Patrick Chovanec, what's going on is a complex multiparty affair in which President Trump has played a key role, but not necessarily a central one. (I posted his Twitter thread at https://twitter.com/prchovanec/status/989895930727026689 on this topic as a response to an earlier answer and was asked to post a summary of his arguments.)
Chovanec is an observer of Asian affairs as managing director of a large asset management fun, former biz prof at Tsinghua University in Beijing, adjunct professor at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and as one of the few Americans who has visited North Korea.
Notable points:
Chovanec offers many caveats about this nuanced situation, but seems to suggest it's a way Kim can win a place on the world stage and get sanctions eased on North Korea while giving away very little and putting on a show in the Korean DMZ to make Trump look good.
In response to Michael_B's answer, just this past week Chrintine Ahn, founder of Women Cross DMZ, was on the podcast Citations Needed. Here's a short snippet from their conversation, which I think is a worthwhile perspective from someone who is actively involved in the peace movement in Korea.
Christine Ahn: It's so amazing to me how much the media just doesn't get the Korea situation at all. And part of it has to do with the South Korean government, and Moon Jae-In's masterful diplomacy, I mean frankly he knows what a narcissistic psychopath-- I mean I don't know if he knows that but they clearly know and have studied very closely Donald Trump and, you know, they have made statements such that "it is because of Donald Trump and the US's maximum pressure campaign" and, they have known all the gracious ways to frame things so that he feels that this is-- Yeah you know, it's like everybody's managing somebody that is a really injured person, an unwell person
Nima Shirazee: You just sort of pat him on the head be like "yup you did this" and then actually go about your business of making peace.
Christine Ahn: Right, absolutely, so I think in that sense Moon Jae-In has been very masterful, but the reality is, the backstory is-- and of course we will never get this in the main stream media, in the corporate, military media, military industrial complex-- is, you know, why did the shift take place? And I would say for sure this threat of a US preventive war-- quote unquote preventive war, whatever that is, illegal preemptive strike against North Korea-- would have so much freaked out the North and the South Koreans that, I mean the Congressional Research Service says that in the opening days of a conventional military conflict, three hundred thousand people would be killed, right? Because if you think you're gonna go and do these precision strikes on North Korea where they have hidden-- they have it on mobile sites-- you know, they have the experience of surviving an indiscriminate US bombing campaign, do you think-- and they have witnessed what has happened to Libya, what has happened to Iraq, do you think that-- you know we think that we have another thing coming in terms of thinking that it would be a stealth mission-- and so there would be a counter strike: There's 87 US bases, there are 30,000 US troops in South Korea. There would be a counter retaliation, so South Korea has seen very clearly, I mean we saw the whole situation with that guy Victor Cha, who is a hawk, and even he couldn't be confirmed by the Trump administration because he wouldn't endorse their bloody nose strategy. So, we see that the Trump administration pushed so hard, McMaster, the crazies in the Trump administration pushed so hard that it basically brought the two Koreas together. And I think that this recent gesture that they were going to resolve the conflict diplomatically, they they were going to help bring an end, has basically taken away the raison detre for the US to say "we are gonna go and do this-- if negotiations with Pyongyang don't go well, then we have to go to Plan B". Well South Korea has basically taking away that reason, that justification, so I think that's a brilliant move.
So in essence, Trump's "maximum pressure policy" and threats of an invasion (his new National Security Advisor John Bolton recently published an article in the Wall Street Journal: "The Legal Case for Striking North Korea First") may have sparked the current round of talks and diplomacy, but the fact is that that diplomacy was entirely arranged between North and South Korea, and Donald Trump did nothing to actually encourage the diplomatic path. So, maybe he and his administration did get us to the current situation, but probably more by accident than through a particularly brilliant strategy.
It is difficult to say what is bringing about the current interesting situation, or whether Kim Jong Un will actually carry through on what he is saying.
However, in this Reuters story, current S Korean president Moon Jae-In responded to a comment from the widow of former S Korean president Kim Dae-Jung that Moon should get the Nobel Peace prize, by saying that Trump should get the prize instead for his contributions by ramping up the pressure on N Korea.
Granted, that's just a quick response, and I seriously doubt the Nobel committee would consider it. However, it would appear that Moon Jae-In, who would be in a position to know, believes that the current US administration has made a major contribution to the major change in direction that the N Korean government appears to be making.
