FOREIGN POLICY/NORTH KOREA/SOUTH KOREA/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “Since his election in May, President Moon Jae-in of South Korea has been something of an odd man out in Washington’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign on North Korea, calling again and again for talks as President Trump was threatening ‘fire and fury.’ At one point, Mr. Trump even accused him of ‘appeasement.’ But Mr. Moon’s persistence suddenly appears to be paying off.
Mr. Trump’s head-spinning decision to accept an invitation to meet with Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, amounts to a remarkable diplomatic coup for Mr. Moon, who engineered the rapprochement in a whirlwind of diplomacy that began at the Winter Olympics last month and gained momentum faster than perhaps even he had anticipated.
Mr. Moon went out of his way to credit Mr. Trump with each breakthrough and personally appealed to Mr. Kim’s sister to engage in talks with the United States. After Mr. Kim played host to the South’s envoys in Pyongyang, Mr. Moon immediately sent them to Washington to brief Mr. Trump, who agreed on the spot to an unprecedented meeting between a sitting American president and a North Korean leader… And he will set the stage for any meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim when he first sits down with the North Korean leader for a summit meeting next month in the Demilitarized Zone.”
-Choe Sang-Hun, “The Man Bringing Trump and Kim Jong-un Together,” The New York Times online, Mar. 9, 2018