캐슬린 스티븐스 전 주한 미국 대사 대담

With the inter-Korean summit now over, focus turns to the North Korea-U.S. summit.
It's a meeting said to have been agreed to by President Trump against his advisors' wishes.
And there's concern about a lack of preparation... not to mention the possibility of one or the other side walking out.
Our Kwon Jang-ho spoke with the former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, Kathleen Stephens, who shared her thoughts on the situation.
Ambassador Stephens, thank you for having us at your lovely home.

Thank you.

What has been your reaction to the developments of the last few months that led to these summits? There is some argument that say Trump's attitude towards North Korea have helped these developments happen.


Well I think certainly this new and very unconventional - to put it mildly - American president has been part of the mix over the past year. I don't think anyone can say with certainty what has driven Kim Jong un to make some of the decisions he's made over the last few months.
But what we do know obviously is that he made a decision to open up a path, which Seoul then embraced and has moved forward with... And now of course President Trump making this rather surprising and quick decision to say, 'All right, let's start at the top and see where we get from there.'

What kinds of concerns do you have towards a Trump-Kim summit?


Well I have that conventional concern that this is a summit that is happening without if you like the traditional preparations. You know I've been involved in many summits in different places over my career and you know generally the notion has always been when your two leaders get together, usually you don't want too many surprises. You know you've worked out the deal pretty much… This is very different.
And when you have two leaders meet without things kind of set it's going to be a fairly broad framework and then you've got to implement and you've got… and that's going to take time. Whether it's shutting down nuclear programs and getting inspectors and whether it's getting to work on resuming some economic and energy cooperation…
And I worry about I guess shortcuts. You know what if there's a deal that maybe satisfies some core issues of 'America first' but is not taking into account the security concerns in Seoul or Tokyo.

Currently there is no U.S. ambassador in South Korea. Especially as an ex-ambassador, how much of a concern is it for you?


Well not only as an ex ambassador but as a former American diplomat. I am very concerned about the weakening and frankly just the lack of staffing in diplomatic positions in general.
…and we feel that I think particularly keenly when we're looking at an issue like Korea where something unprecedented is about to happen, a sitting American president has said that he's going to meet with the leader of the DPRK. So you kind of want to have not only you're A-team in place, you want to have a sense of continuity and that's the other