'korea Asserting'

Will Moon Jae-in become the second Korean president to win a Nobel Peace Prize after Kim Dae-jung? If the summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un comes off successfully, he could well be an award recipient. It would also be an example of how "Korea passing" has suddenly become "Korea asserting."

Moon has done an extraordinary job of rescuing Seoul from being sidelined in the escalating tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, and assuming instead a central role in finding a way out of a looming conflict.

He displayed deftness in responding to Kim Jong-un's olive branch at the beginning of the year by inviting North Korea to participate in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. He has since undertaken the much more difficult task of keeping momentum toward a peaceful resolution of the nuclear crisis going once the Olympic Games ended.

Moon has not only promoted continued inter-Korean diplomacy, but has managed to bridge the divide between Washington and Pyongyang by serving as a mediator. Imagine Park Geun-hye trying to play that role if she was still in power.

He has achieved all this despite initial skepticism. His conservative critics attacked him for rolling out the red carpet for North Korea and by saying that the PyeongChang Olympics turned into the Pyongyang Olympics. Many analysts thought that the Olympics would represent only a temporary pause in escalating tensions.

By conducting shuttle diplomacy between Pyongyang and Washington, Moon's top aides laid the groundwork for the Trump-Kim summit. This effort has since been aided by secret contacts between the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, South Korea's National Intelligence Service and the former head of North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau, according to The New York Times.

The danger for Moon, however, is that playing an intermediary role leaves him vulnerable if things go wrong in the coming weeks. The knifes are already being sharpened in Washington in case he fails. Moon's U. S. critics suggest that he has misled Trump to agreeing to hold a summit with Kim, for which the U.S. president is unprepared, by suggesting that Pyongyang is ready to talk about denuclearization.

"It is in South Korea's interest to put the best spin on whatever happened in Pyongyang [when Moon's team met Kim], given Seoul's fears about the ongoing drumbeat from the White House about using military strikes against North Korea and President Moon Jae-in's desire to...