- "Earlier in the present crisis, before the Winter Olympics, it seemed likely to South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s government that the United States was on the brink of launching a pre-emptive military strike against the North. It was Seoul’s conviction that this would be disastrous, combined with a sense of powerlessness at their evident lack of a veto against US action, which led Moon to reactivate the dormant back-channel with Pyongyang."
- "The world has fundamentally changed since the days of the Sunshine Policy. China is now a superpower and is the primary power in North East Asia. Whatever solution to the Korean imbroglio is found it must be, in Seoul’s calculation, acceptable to Beijing. Good relations with China are now seen as an essential plank of South Korean foreign policy.
- "Whilst South Korea would prefer for the North to denuclearize, it can nonetheless live with a nuclear North Korea. It has already done so for 12 years and has no serious concern that Pyongyang would use a nuclear weapon against fellow Koreans in the South. For Seoul, the much bigger fear is of an American strike against North Korea which ends up with Seoul being targeted by North Korean artillery and covert attacks mounted against southern infrastructure."
Tim Willasey-Wilsey, a former senior British diplomat, says South Korea's aggressive diplomacy with North Korea is indicative of a strategic shift in the country's foreign policy - and its relationship with the United States.
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