by Robert A. Manning

    President Lee faces a North Korea that has abandoned reunification, built a massive nuclear arsenal and aligned with Russia, leaving only modest hope for risk reduction, not reconciliation.

    Editor’s Note: This article is part of the symposium “President Lee and North Korea.” The full symposium can be found here.

    During the recent election campaign, then-candidate Lee Jae-myung’s confession that arranging a North-South Summit with Kim Jong-un would be “very difficult” was a welcome hint of his promised pragmatism. However, opening channels of communication with the North, a pledge President Lee has made in his Inauguration speech, may be a heavy lift. 

    Why Is North Korea More Hostile to South Korea Now?

    Since the failed 2019 Trump-Kim Summit, Kim has made a radical strategic shift, from Pyongyang’s strategic partnership with Russia to a massive missile and nuclear build-up to changing Pyongyang’s constitution, rejecting the goal of reunification and declaring South Korea a “hostile state.” These changes have undone core assumptions underlying 30 years of US and South Korean diplomacy. 

    Lee faces a geopolitical landscape dramatically different from the heady days of Trump 1.0, when his Democratic Party predecessor, Moon Jae-in, held Summits with Kim Jong-un and persuaded Trump to do so. Since the Trump-Kim Hanoi Summit, a humiliated Kim Jong-un has discarded a long-held North Korean priority of normalizing ties to the US, opting instead in 2021 for a five-year missile and nuclear build-up as his ultimate insurance policy, now embodied in its constitution and preemptive atomic doctrine. 

    He has realized chiefly his plan, attaining solid fuel ICBMs, tactical nuclear cruise missiles, nuclear ballistic missile submarines, miniaturized warheads and with a strong Russian alliance, military reconnaissance satellites and other advanced military tech. It is an arsenal much larger than needed for deterrence, in effect, taking the hope of denuclearization off the table and raising questions about Kim’s intentions.

    These new capabilities and stated intentions facilitated by Pyongyang’s Ukraine-driven partnership with Russia have changed the strategic balance in Northeast Asia, challenging US extended deterrence. With Moscow as a source of food, fuel and military technology, Kim has reduced much of China’s influence and positioned himself to revert to Cold War dynamics, playing Beijing and Moscow off against each other. Combined with North Korean hackers’ heist of some $6 billion in cryptocurrency, Kim has largely negated the impact of UN Security Council sanctions. 

    Most vexing for Seoul is the most dramatic part of Pyongyang’s shift, Kim’s 2024 rejection of the 70-year-old shared North-South goal of “one divided family” reunification, deleting it from North Korea’s Constitution and ripping down a reunification monument his father built. 

    How Will President Lee Work with a More Aggressive North Korea?

    The magnitude of the North Korean threat and President Trump’s expressed desire to take a third run at Kim Jong-un are likely to incentivize Nordpolitik Lee’s pursuits. So far, however, the US theory class has had more ambitious ideas for what Trump should do or not do than the Seoul class. 

    Lee appears more modest than his predecessor regarding North-South diplomacy. Acknowledging the difficulties, he has called for more dialogue with Pyongyang and reconstituting an inter-Korean military accord, one of several North-South arrangements that Kim has ostentatiously destroyed. Lee has moved swiftly to change the atmospherics, shutting down propaganda broadcasts to North Korea at the Demilitarized Zone to reverse former President Yoon Suk Yeol’s hardline posture. Pyongyang has reciprocated, shutting down its.

    Given the failures of Trump’s previous two Summits (promoted by former President Moon), Kim’s strategic shift and a stressed US-South Korean alliance (mainly due to Trump tariffs and defense spending demands), any Trump-Kim initiative will likely be launched independently of South Korea. 

    With Kim’s new cozy economic and military situation, denuclearization and inter-Korean reconciliation are off the table, limiting diplomatic possibilities. It is not apparent what Trump or Lee has to offer that would pique Kim’s interest, nor what value they would provide to the US or South Korea. Political space for modest risk reduction measures or mostly symbolic declarations of the end of war or peace may exist. However, any more robust deals, such as a nuclear freeze, would likely see the same fate as previous efforts. This time, don’t expect history to rhyme. The hope is for deterrence to hold.