Five months into his term, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung has articulated a concrete foreign policy vision and is determined to put it into practice. Lee maintains amicable relations with Japan despite anti-Japan sentiment from the South Korean left. He continues anchoring South Korea’s foreign policy, including its North Korea policy, on the alliance with the United States. However, the South Korean president is ready to say no to the United States’ demands that South Korea contribute in a Taiwan contingency. Lee does not want to antagonize China as he also needs both Beijing’s help with re-engaging North Korea and access to the Chinese market.
The most ambitious of all is Lee’s policy toward Pyongyang. He envisions an era of peaceful coexistence built on his “Exchange, Normalization, and Denuclearization” initiative, or END.
Lee thought he would get his first major diplomatic victory when there were rumors of a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean Chairman Kim Jong Un during Trump’s visit to South Korea for the APEC summit. In the end, Trump did not meet Kim due to a “timing” problem. North Korea made its voice heard in Moscow instead. In a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui pledged continued support for Russia’s war against Ukraine.
The main issue with Lee’s END vision is not a lack of effort but the lack of new initiatives to get North Korea back to the table amid the new geopolitical configuration.
Every South Korean liberal president, including Lee, has built their North Korea policy on three assumptions. The first assumption is that North Korea is isolated. The second one is that North Korea desires unification. The last is that North Korea will eventually give up its nuclear weapons. The action plan is simple – with more engagement (“Exchange”), inter-Korean relations will be normalized by a peace treaty (“Normalization”), and North Korea will feel secure enough to give up its nuclear weapons (“Denuclearization”). After this long process of reconciliation and coexistence, the two Koreas will eventually unify.
The three assumptions originated from the 1991 Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-Aggression, and Exchanges and Cooperation between South and North Korea. At that time North Korea was isolated by the demise of the socialist bloc, impoverished due to a decrease in foreign aid, and perceived to be on the verge of collapsing like its Eastern European peers.
South Korean liberal presidents Kim Dae-jung (1998-2003) and Roh Moo-hyun (2003-2008) leveraged North Korea’s dire situation to push for political dialogue and the opening of inter-Korean economic and tourism projects in Kaesong and Kumgang. Later, Moon Jae-in (2017-2022) also capitalized on North Korea’s isolation and lack of cash due to sanctions and advocated for a re-opening of these projects.
Although these liberal initiatives ultimately failed, North Korea at least played along. It is not guaranteed that it will do so with Lee’s END.
First, North Korea is not isolated and penniless like it was in the 1990s. The country has revived Cold War ties with China, Russia, Vietnam, and Laos. Importantly, now North Korea is betting on a rising China instead of a declining Soviet Union. Russia’s and China’s growing trade with Pyongyang and their withdrawal of support for international sanctions mean North Korea no longer relies on just South Korea’s investment to substitute for foreign aid. North Korea’s $20 billion arms trade with Russia alone outweighs any economic benefits Seoul can give. This weakens the economic leverage of South Korea’s engagement. Apparently, Pyongyang is in no rush to secure Seoul’s money this time.
Second, North Korea no longer desires unification and has adopted a “hostile two-state theory.” Pyongyang now considers its relationship with Seoul to be one between two states, while Seoul continues perceiving such a relationship as a special situation in the process of unification. North Korea’s new theory has sowed confusion among South Korean policymakers, with Lee’s top aides quarreling over what the “two-state theory” means and whether Seoul can constitutionally treat Pyongyang as a separate state in pursuit of and after normalization.
Since the 1990s, South Korean liberals have justified engagement with North Korea by arguing that economic and political rewards can help it avoid a catastrophic collapse. A North Korea that is no longer on the verge of collapse shatters the expectation that unification is in the offing and contests the South Korean left’s case for engagement. North Korea’s new “two-state theory” makes dialogue challenging because Pyongyang and Seoul do not agree on the ends, ways, and means of political engagement.
Third, besides rejecting unification, Pyongyang no longer pretends that it regards denuclearization as the goal of engagement. Different from the past, when China opposed North Korea’s nuclear program, this time Beijing has turned a blind eye to the issue of denuclearization. Kim was thus willing to turn down Trump’s open call for a summit during his APEC trip because the U.S. president has not explicitly committed to recognizing Pyongyang as a nuclear state.
North Korea’s newfound leverage in nuclear talks plus its elevated international profile means Kim will not rely on Lee’s self-proclaimed role as a “pacemaker” for any North Korea-U.S. talks, a far cry from the days of Moon’s shuttle diplomacy. And without denuclearization as an end goal, Lee cannot justify offering economic and political rewards to North Korea.
Lee tried to distinguish his North Korea policy from those of his liberal predecessors by highlighting that END is not a sequence of priorities meant to disentangle nuclear talks from peace talks. This is a smart move to avoid repeating the pitfall of Moon’s North Korea policy. The former president could not make substantial progress in the peace talks, as Moon was hand-tied by the deadlock in nuclear talks.
However, Lee’s North Korea policy is still built on outdated assumptions, and it is unclear how he could in substance disentangle economic and political engagement from denuclearization. He cannot shun such engagement, like his conservative predecessor Yoon Suk-yeol did, because doing so only justifies North Korea’s hostile attitude.
Lee has circumvented some of these problems by using the word “stop” instead of “freeze” to describe his vision of denuclearization. He also does not give a clear timeline of when denuclearization can be achieved in service of reviving inter-Korean ties in the short term. Lee, however, cannot reject denuclearization altogether. To Pyongyang, this is now a nonstarter.
Seoul also cannot accept North Korea’s “two-state theory” just for the sake of engagement, because treating Pyongyang as a separate entity without any mention of unification is unconstitutional. Seoul is unable to justify normalizing relations with North Korea via a peace treaty if normalization means the permanent division of the peninsula.
The prospect of external help with engagement is not promising. Washington’s and Beijing’s support for Lee’s engagement with North Korea are contingent on contradictory gestures. The United States will only support Lee’s North Korea policy if he commits to an expanded role in a Taiwan contingency. On the contrary, China will demand that South Korea curb its involvement in the U.S. regional military plan. Russia has abandoned its equidistant approach toward the two Koreas, and it likely wants North Korea to strengthen ties with Moscow instead of with Seoul. Lee certainly does not want to upset South Korea’s delicate balance between the superpowers for the sake of progress with his North Korea policy.
Lee’s North Korea policy is a little different, but much the same as his liberal predecessors’. Without a major overhaul of the key assumptions, Lee’s END vision will end before it even begins.
