On August 19, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met in Seoul with South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun, pledging that China will continue to play a “constructive role” in stabilizing the situation on the Korean Peninsula. A few days earlier, on August 15, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung announced in his Liberation Day speech that South Korea was interested in initiating talks that might lead to a final peace agreement with the DPRK. “As President Lee Jae Myung presented a blueprint for peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula in his recent Liberation Day address,” Cho said, “the South Korean government will continue efforts to achieve denuclearization and peace on the Korean Peninsula.”
This occurs at a point of time when President Trump has announced that he would again meet with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and had curtailed the time spent in the traditional US-South Korean military maneuvers, which are normally held with the view of the threat of a new conflict with North Korea. While the decision of the South Korean President to seek talks with the DPRK was made independently of the decisions by the US government, they in turn have provided further impetus to resolving the problems on the Korean peninsula through negotiations between the two parties. The issue of denuclearization, however, could become a more difficult issue to resolve, given that US actions in Iran have sent the message to other nations that without a nuclear capability, they too could be subject to the same type of aggression as had been experienced recently by Iran and by Venezuela
