South Korea’s new president seeks engagement with North Korea, but Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions, ties with Russia, and disinterest in talks suggest old strategies will likely fail again.
Past left-leaning governments in South Korea have sought greater engagement with North Korea, of which the Sunshine Policy, initiated by Kim Dae-jung in 1998, is a prime example.
The policy sought to achieve “peaceful coexistence” between the two Koreas, but North Korea’s nuclear ambitions only grew with time. Nearly two decades later, the Moon Jae-in administration pursued a similar strategy, but by this time, North Korea was a nuclear-armed state and unabashedly proclaiming itself as such.
Despite the leaders of the two Koreas meeting for three summits in 2018, Pyongyang showed little intention either to denuclearise or improve its egregious human rights record. The thawing of inter-Korean ties, a product of warming US-DPRK ties during the first Trump administration, would be short-lived.
What Is the New South Korean President’s Policy on North Korea?
Lee Jae-myung took little time to fulfill his pre-election desire to reconcile South Korea’s ties with North Korea. In his first week in office, he ordered South Korean loudspeakers along the inter-Korean border, broadcasting K-pop and South Korean media, to be turned off; the following day, North Korea reciprocated concerning its propaganda loudspeakers. Akin to Moon Jae-in, Lee has also adopted a hardline approach to sending anti-DPRK leaflets by South Korean human rights activists across the inter-Korean border.
In 2023, the South Korean Constitutional Court ruled Moon Jae-in’s 2020 decision to ban the sending of these leaflets as unconstitutional. Any similarly stringent decision on the part of the Lee government, which cannot be ruled out, will hardly be uncontroversial.
The Lee government’s inter-Korean policy must be understood within South Korea’s broader foreign policy. Before his election, Lee gained notoriety for chastising the Yoon Suk-yeol administration’s policies towards Tokyo, Washington, and Pyongyang. In one infamous occasion, he described trilateral US-South Korea-Japan military exercises as a “defense disaster” and “pro-Japanese act.” He also sought “amicable” relations with Russia and China during the escalating individual and collaborative threats of Moscow and Beijing.
In his inaugural address, however, Lee seemed to go against his previous opinions and espouse a vision of “pragmatic” diplomacy, involving strengthening trilateralism between the United States, South Korea, and Japan, while bolstering deterrence against and increasing dialogue with North Korea. We must wait and see if these claims signal greater continuity rather than change in South Korea’s foreign policy.
Why President Lee’s North Korea Policy Will Not Work
What makes 2025 different from the days of the Sunshine Policy is the multiple, unprecedented security challenges faced by the East Asian region. North Korea’s ongoing development of nuclear weapons and delivery systems is now coupled with an expanding partnership between Pyongyang and Moscow.
Given the Trump administration’s transactional approach to alliances, South Korea needs to sustain and bolster ties with the United States and Japan more than ever. Any attempts to tilt away from the United States towards China risk straining the US-ROK relationship even further, given the Trump administration’s prioritisation of deterring China and its emphasis on “strategic flexibility” vis-à-vis the US Forces in Korea.
Whether the Lee government’s recent gestures will improve South Korea’s ties with the North depends heavily on North Korea’s intentions.
Over the past four years, North Korea has not even been pretending to engage in talks with Seoul, Tokyo, or Washington. For instance, whilst Lee expressed a desire to restore the inter-Korean hotline, North Korea’s failure to respond to calls since 2023 emphasizes that if inter-Korean relations are to improve, then Pyongyang must also be prepared to act.
Not only does banning the deployment of anti-DPRK leaflets prevent another stream of information from reaching the North Korean people at a time of increasingly stringent societal control by the Kim Jong Un regime, but doing so is likely to have minimal impact on North Korea’s broader attitude towards South Korea, not least after Kim Jong Un abandoned the reunification of the Korean Peninsula as a core policy goal in December 2023.
With an emboldened Pyongyang getting what it wants and needs from Moscow, Kim Jong Un may also wish to hold off on meeting Trump for now and instead meet the US President at a time of his convenience.
About the Author: Edward Howell
Edward Howell is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Oxford, Korea Foundation Fellow at the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House), London, and Research Fellow with the Pharos Foundation. His recent book, North Korea and the Global Nuclear Order, was published by Oxford University Press in 2023. Edward frequently offers analysis and commentary for national and international media, including The Spectator, The Telegraph, The Times, BBC News, Sky News, and CNN.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Office of the President of the Russian Federation.
