By Julian Dierkes
Kim Jong-il Kindergarten in Darkhan City
North Korea has long been an important element in Mongolia’s foreign relations. With the surprise announcement of plans for a meeting between Pres. Donald Trump and Chairman of the Worker’s Party of Korea Kim Jong-un, we tried to stoke discussions about a possible involvement for Mongolia in the lead-up, hosting and follow-up to any meeting.
Recent Writing
Here are some of the articles we’ve published on this topic in late March:
- Dierkes, Julian and MENDEE Jargalsaikhan. 2018. “8 Reasons Why Mongolia’s Capital, Ulaanbaatar, Might Be the Place for a Trump-Kim Summit“, The Diplomat.
- Dierkes, Julian and MENDEE Jargalsaikhan. 2018. “ТҮҮХЭН БОЛОМЖИЙГ БҮҮ АЛДААСАЙ“, MongolTV.
- Dierkes, Julian and MENDEE Jargalsaikhan. 2018. “What Mongolia Gains by Playing Host to a Historic Trump-Kim Summit“, The Diplomat.
- Dierkes, Julian. 2018. “Trump, Kim … und die Mongolei?“, Internationale Politik und Gesellschaft. (English | На русском)
- Dierkes, Julian and MENDEE Jargalsaikhan . 2018. “Location, location, location: Ulaanbaatar still in the running to host Trump-Kim summit“, The Diplomat.
- MENDEE Jargalsaikhan and Julian Dierkes. 2018 “UB Dialogue Initiatives from the 1970s to 1990s“, Mongolia Focus.
- Dierkes, Julian. 2018. “Some Thoughts about Logistics of a Steppe Summit“, Mongolia Focus.
- Dierkes, Julian and MENDEE Jargalsaikhan. 2018. “Elevate Ulaanbaatar Dialogue“, Mongolia Focus.
- Dierkes, Julian. 2018. “What to Call a Trump-Kim Summit?“, Mongolia Focus.
- Dierkes, Julian and MENDEE Jargalsaikhan. 2018. “In Discussing North Korea, Recall Mongolia’s Peaceful Revolution and End to One-Party Rule“. The Diplomat.
There was also some interest around engaging North Korea via Mongolia around the time plans for the “Vancouver Group” meeting were announced in late 2017. Together with Chimguundari N, I wrote a piece for Policy Options: “Mongolia as a Canada-North Korea Intermediary“.
Yesterday, I quoted discussions (from Digital Archive @TheWilsonCenter) b/w Kim Il-Sung & visiting #Mongolia-n leader J Batmunkh to illustrate ????????-???????? history. https://t.co/vt2dmhHtMb
— Julian Dierkes (@jdierkes) April 20, 2018
Long-Standing Interest
But, obviously, North Korea did not just suddenly show up on Mongolia’s radar this year. Quite the contrary, the long-standing engagement is one of the elements that make Mongolian involvement in 2018 plausible.
In Spring 2017, I thus wrote a post that looked at some of the turmoil Mongolia could be facing in foreign relations during a Trump presidency, explicitly speculating about what developments in the US stance toward North Korea might mean for Mongolia, though I didn’t include a summit as a possible development.
For other North Korea-related posts, see https://blogs.ubc.ca/mongolia/category/mongolia-and/north-korea-mongolia-and/.
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