REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Presidents Donald Trump and Moon Jae-in at a meeting in November 2017.
- Donald Trump should win a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end a standoff with North Korea over nuclear weapons, according to South Korea's president.
- Moon Jae-in said Monday: "President Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize. What we need is only peace."
- Trump threatened war with North Korea multiple times and pushed very harsh sanctions on the country after its nuclear and missile tests.
- Moon thinks that hardline move could have tipped the balance towards a deal.
President Donald Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the standoff with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Monday.
"President Trump should win the Nobel Peace Prize. What we need is only peace," Moon told a cabinet meeting, according to a media release.
Moon met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Friday, where the pair pledged to end hostilities and work toward the "complete denuclearization" at the first inter-Korean summit since 2007.
Trump is expected to meet with Kim in May or early June, and has been in regular contact with Moon.
The recent outpouring of diplomacy from North Korea follows Trump's first year in office, during which he frequently traded nuclear threats with Pyongyang, threatening at different times to rain down "fire and fury" and to "totally destroy" North Korea.
North Korea, for its part, demonstrated for the first time ever in 2017 the ability to reach the US with a missile and what experts believed was a thermonuclear bomb many times strong than those used on Japan at the close of World War II.
After the intercontinental ballistic missile tests and the nuclear tests, the US led pushes for sanctions in the UN and Trump personally pressured Chinese President Xi Jinping to crack down on Pyongyang.
As a result China - North Korea's main trading partner - greatly cut trade with the country, which contributed to a serious economic decline.
Nobody knows why Kim is talking, but everyone knows Trump did something different
Ahn Young-joon/AP
A combo image of Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un on Korean TV.
A number of circumstances aligned before Kim's push for peace with the South, many of them offering plausible explanations for the apparent about-face.
Three include the crippling sanctions on North Korea which a peace deal could remove, the constant threat of military action from Trump, and the completion of the nuclear missile program that provoked so much of the US's ire.
While all of these causes likely contribute to the renewed push for peace, Moon has firmly said for some time that he thinks Trump deserves "big credit."
In January, Moon said Trump "deserves big credit for bringing about the inter-Korean talks. It could be a resulting work of the US-led sanctions and pressure."
"Developments in Korea are an example of how Trump could produce upside surprises a 'normal' president wouldn't," Business Insider's Josh Barro wrote of the recent peace push from North Korea.
"By looking risky, Trump may be inducing a de-risking by other world powers."