A U.S.-North Korea summit will happen. The ball President Donald Trump set in motion on the 16th of this month, when he ordered a scaling back of South Korea-U.S. joint military exercises, is likely to end in a meeting between the two countries. Trump has publicly confirmed his intention to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un before the end of the year.
Trump's intent is clear. He pledged three core tasks for his second-term foreign policy: ending the Russia-Ukraine war within 24 hours, achieving permanent peace in the Middle East including a resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue, and settling the Korean Peninsula question by leveraging his relationship with Kim. Yet the Russia-Ukraine war, the first he took on, is far from over and is instead at risk of widening, while the war with Iran that he launched in late February with Israel through a preemptive strike has found no exit six months on. So Trump's eyes turn to Kim. A president who wants to be remembered by history is looking for an achievement on the Korean Peninsula.
North Korea also wants talks with the United States. In a policy speech at the 13th session of the 14th Supreme People's Assembly last September, Kim said he still personally holds good memories of the current U.S. president, Trump. Measured against his calling former President Joe Biden a doddering old man, that is an extremely positive assessment. At the 9th Party Congress in February this year, he also said that if the United States respects his country's current status as written into its constitution and withdraws its hostile policy toward North Korea, there is no reason the North cannot get along with Washington. But the experience of 2018 and 2019 — above all the humiliation at Hanoi — still lingers, so this time Pyongyang may start with working-level negotiations rather than putting a leaders' meeting first. It has already set out preconditions: the two stated at the 9th Party Congress. The "current status written into the constitution" means North Korea as a nuclear weapons state. What matters here is the word "respect," not "recognition." Because North Korea knows well that the United States cannot formally recognize it as a nuclear weapons state, the phrasing reads as a call to negotiate on the premise of its existing nuclear arsenal. It is the same approach the United States and the Soviet Union took during the Cold War, when they turned to nuclear arms control to lower threats and manage crises. Withdrawal of the hostile policy means a permanent halt to South Korea-U.S. joint exercises, as shown when Kim Yo-jong, a department director of North Korea's Workers' Party, dismissed the scaled-back drills on the 19th as not even worth commenting on.
Trump appears to be moving toward these demands. Asked on the 19th of this month whether denuclearization was the goal of a summit, he said he did not want to talk about that and changed the subject. His remark at the same appearance that North Korea has 57 nuclear weapons also sits at a distance from denuclearization, because specifying a number reads as having arms reduction — cutting the stockpile — in mind rather than complete dismantlement.
If the United States requests a summit through behind-the-scenes contacts or a formal proposal, North Korea is likely to accept. The problem is what comes next. For the sake of his own legacy, Trump may concentrate on capping the capabilities aimed at the U.S. homeland. Intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and nuclear-powered submarines would be the main targets. In that case, the short-range nuclear missiles aimed at South Korea would remain as they are. A deal that removes only the threat to the U.S. homeland buys American safety while leaving South Korean risk in place. That is decoupling of the alliance, realized at the negotiating table. The chances that South Korea is excluded from the process are also high. The order to scale back the exercises was itself tied to displeasure over President Lee Jae-myung's refusal to support operations against Iran, and the South Korean government was not even given advance notice. Trump raised the issue publicly on the 17th. It is hard to expect a president who acts on impulse and has added demands for cost sharing to consult closely with Seoul at a summit with North Korea. And because Pyongyang declared a "two hostile states" doctrine in December 2023 and designated South Korea as its principal enemy, there is no room for inter-Korean communication either.
A moment of crisis is approaching again. South Korea could be shut out of the North Korean nuclear question, an existential threat. The only solution is coordination with Washington. Seoul must again nail down the final goal of North Korea's denuclearization in a joint South Korea-U.S. document, institutionalize prior consultation on adjustments to joint exercises and any restructuring of U.S. Forces Korea, and activate the Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG) to verify that extended deterrence can be carried out. Above all, it must persuade the United States not to leave the short-range and tactical nuclear weapons aimed at South Korea off the negotiating agenda. The narrower the range of choices, the more specific the demands must be.
