Seoul Drops 'Denuclearization First,' Betting a Softer Line Might Move Pyongyang
South Korea shifts strategy on North Korea, but experts doubt Kim Jong Un is ready to return to the table
By Solomon "Customs" Bridges
For years, South Korea's official position on North Korea began with a precondition: no real progress until Pyongyang gave up its nuclear weapons. That precondition is now gone.
South Korea is moving away from its long-standing policy of demanding denuclearization as a first step before broader engagement with North Korea, according to NPR News. The shift marks a notable change in Seoul's approach to a neighbor that has spent the past several years expanding, not shrinking, its nuclear arsenal.
But NPR reports that experts doubt the change in posture will be enough to draw Pyongyang back to negotiations. North Korea has shown little recent interest in talks of any kind, having built its foreign policy in this period around deepening ties with Russia and treating its nuclear program as non-negotiable, a permanent fact of the regime rather than a bargaining chip.
The calculation behind Seoul's move appears to be pragmatic rather than idealistic: if insisting on denuclearization first has produced years of stalemate, perhaps a different opening — arms control, confidence-building measures, economic contacts — might produce something, anything, in its place. It is a bet that a smaller ask might succeed where a larger one has failed.
What happens on the Korean peninsula rarely stays there. A North Korea unmoored from denuclearization talks and increasingly tied to Moscow's war effort is a variable in calculations from Washington to Tokyo to Beijing. Seoul's shift is worth watching less for what it promises than for what it concedes: that the old strategy wasn't working, and nobody yet knows if the new one will either.
[This account draws on a single NPR report; the full South Korean policy document was not independently reviewed.]
Nothing happens 'over there' anymore.
— Compiled from reporting by NPR News.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."