[Lee Kyong-hee] Restart dialogue toward detente and peace

Korea Herald

7 hours ago

Some 10 days into the Lee Jae-myung administration, clear signs of a thaw are emerging along the border dividing the two Koreas. Amid a flurry of activities largely focused on economic stimulus, President Lee also instructed South Korean civic groups and the military to suspend cross-border propaganda using balloons and loudspeakers. The next day, North Korea halted its broadcasts of eerie noises to the South, giving border residents their first quiet in about a year.
It would be premature to declare this brief respite a prelude to sustained calm on the world's most heavily fortified border. But it would be remiss to ignore the conspicuous signs of efforts to find a breakthrough in the stalled relations with nuclear-armed North Korea.
Signals from both Seoul and Washington are cause for cautious optimism. President Lee appears to be intent on fulfilling his campaign promise to restore communications with Pyongyang and ease tensions around the peninsula. Within days of his inauguration, Lee made clear that his approach would differ from his predecessor, Yoon Suk Yeol, whose tough-guy stance did little but estrange the North. Lee's timing seems auspicious. US President Donald Trump is reportedly seeking to revive summit talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Trump's overture comes somewhat earlier than expected given that the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East remain in limbo.
NK News, an American subscription-based news website headquartered in Seoul, reported last week that North Korean diplomats in New York had refused to accept a letter from Trump to Kim on multiple occasions. At the same time, Karoline Leavitt, the White House spokesperson, said, 'President Trump remains receptive to correspondence with Kim Jong-un, and he'd like to see the progress that was made at the summit in Singapore in 2018, during his first term.'
Now, both Lee and Trump are in Kananaskis, Canada, attending the G7 Summit. If they have a sideline meeting — apart from the more urgent issues of tariffs — the two leaders may exchange views on North Korea and Kim Jong-un. If they feel they need a longer time to share their visions of summit diplomacy with Kim against the background of complicated geopolitical challenges, they may promise to meet again soon in Washington.
From experience, one can say that, whether for engagement or containment, managing North Korea has mostly been contingent on the political will of leaders in Seoul and Washington. Most notably, the Biden administration marked the only US presidential term since the end of the Cold War during which there was not a single meeting between US and North Korean officials. It largely overlapped with Yoon's tenure in Seoul, when the South Korean leader's hawkish approach not only grounded inter-Korean relations but effectively supported Biden's 'strategic patience,' which amounted to doing nothing. The Yoon and Biden administrations ended up allowing Kim to significantly advance his nuclear and missile capabilities and pursue a major strategic reorientation toward Russia.
There have also been times when a liberal South Korean government caused friction with conservatives in Washington by pushing ahead with inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation.
In this context, Lee and Trump form a rare duo: both are purportedly determined to improve relations with the North and equally bold, even capable of formulating unconventional approaches with Pyongyang.
Lee and his Democratic Party of Korea have long advocated dialogue with Pyongyang as the only practicable way to avoid conflict on the divided peninsula and reduce tensions over the North's nuclear arms development. 'It is important to win a war, and it is even more important to win without a war,' Lee says. 'Yet, the best of all is to make it unnecessary to fight. No matter how costly, peace is better than war.'
With Trump back in the White House, Lee will have a rare opportunity to make progress in his North Korea policy. Considering Trump's impulsive temperament and short attention span, Lee may become invaluable in maintaining the momentum for detente with his detail-oriented, pragmatic skills. He will also be tasked with crafting paths to safeguard the South's essential national interests.
Kim, knowing that he now has more cards than in 2018, when he met with Trump, will likely take his time in responding to their overtures. But he must be smart enough to realize that this could be his last opportunity to achieve his long-standing goal of lifting the North out of poverty through a real economic transformation. He should know that he can receive assistance from the United States and South Korea, the kind which he can never acquire from Russia or China.
Both Lee and Trump will need to make sufficient concessions to bring Kim to the negotiating table, but it will prove to be a worthwhile endeavor if the breakthrough can lead to building permanent peace on the peninsula and ultimately contribute to reshaping the geopolitical landscape in the region. There will be numerous daunting hurdles to overcome, but for the two Koreas, this may be a truly rare chance to remove the clouds of nuclear conflagration and achieve peaceful and prosperous coexistence.