The recent summit between President Donald Trump and his South Korean counterpart, Lee Jae-myung, paved the way for joint efforts to restart peace talks with North Korea, after such efforts failed under the US president’s first administration.
But the situation has become more complicated since Trump last collaborated with a progressive South Korean president to advance negotiations with North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un.
Kim has ordered an unprecedented troop deployment to assist Russia in its war against Ukraine, reinforcing a landmark mutual defense treaty reached with Moscow last year, and has accelerated military buildup, showing little sign of abandoning its nuclear arsenal, a long-cherished Pyongyang. At the same time, he has rejected Seoul’s overtures and even abandoned the goal of unification with South Korea as a national objective.
Analysts and former officials fear that these challenges to the status quo, which has so far prevented a major conflict in the DMZ since its creation at the end of the Korean War more than seven decades ago, could add new twists to an increasingly unpredictable equation.
“There is a real and growing risk that Kim Jong-un could spark a new conflict in Korea,” Markus Garlauskas, director of the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, told Newsweek. “I worry that in the absence of significant aggression from the North recently, and because Kim appears to have abandoned the goal of Korean unification, many Americans have become complacent about this risk.” »
Garlauskas, who previously held several US intelligence positions focused on North Korea as well as with US Forces Korea, added: “Many Americans are locked into a very regressive view of deterrence in Korea, focused on deterring an all-out attack, which sets the bar at the wrong level… and ignores the magnitude of change,” “particularly with regard to the improvement of North Korea’s nuclear and non-nuclear strike capabilities and the strategic alignment between China, Russia, and North Korea.”
North Korea’s ‘Strongest Strategic Position’
While North Korea, officially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, is often portrayed in the West as a paper tiger in terms of military capabilities and geopolitical influence, U.S. officials have consistently sounded the alarm about what they see as Pyongyang’s efforts to simultaneously improve its military prowess and strengthen its international partnerships.
In its annual threat assessment, released in March, the Office of National Intelligence (ODNI) described North Korea as “occupying its strongest strategic position in decades, possessing the military capabilities necessary to threaten U.S. forces and their allies in Northeast Asia, while continuing to improve its ability to threaten the U.S. homeland.”
For his part, Kim is “increasingly confident in his international political legitimacy and the security of his regime,” according to the ODNI assessment.
Its legitimacy has gained weight thanks to the intensification of relations in recent years, particularly last year between Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Pyongyang’s relations with Moscow date back to the founding of North Korea, a Soviet-backed state led by Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un’s grandfather, against a US-backed South Korea after World War II, and the subsequent war between the two sides from 1950 to 1953. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was accompanied by a famine that was the most devastating chapter in North Korea’s history and increased its dependence on China.
Since coming to power in 2012, Kim has sought to rebalance his country’s relations with major powers by investing in strengthening ties with Moscow. He began a new chapter in this initiative last year by ordering the deployment of thousands of troops to support Russian forces seeking to repel a Ukrainian cross-border offensive.
Kim’s decision in recent months to acknowledge, or even accept, this exploratory action underscored his perception of North Korea’s important role in world affairs.
Garlauskas said he shared the latest assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, warning that the “interconnectedness” of flashpoints in Europe and Asia “makes the situation more dangerous than before, as does the development of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities.”
He added: “As North Korea’s military capabilities improve with Russian support, Kim’s risk calculations are likely to change, and it will be difficult to predict when he will decide to use military force again to achieve North Korea’s objectives, at a time and place that will allow him to gain a military and political advantage.”
The potential evolution of such a conflict was the subject of a desk exercise in May, which Garlauskas participated in alongside his Indo-Pacific Security Initiative team and U.S. government officials.
Among his findings, he stated that “the escalating conflict between South Korea, the United States, and North Korea is likely to involve the future of the global nuclear order, the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence, and the potential unification of the long-divided Korean Peninsula.”
Threats From Within
While Kim appears confident in his improved public standing, some point to impending domestic trends that could also influence his calculations.
Developments in North Korea’s domestic situation are notoriously difficult to track, even for current U.S. officials, given the country’s strict security regime, limited ties to the outside world, and adherence to a distinctive Juche ideology that emphasizes sovereignty and self-reliance. But Kim’s rare acknowledgment of setbacks, including hints of a new “Arduous March”—a term used to describe the period of famine that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union—suggests flaws in the conventional narrative.
“North Korea is experiencing significant internal instability,” Bruce Bennett, a senior defense researcher at the RAND Corporation, told Newsweek. “This instability reflects North Korea’s inability to meet the needs of its population, including food, consumer goods, and other basic needs.”
“This is a particular problem for North Korean elites, who have long hoped for a much better life than the general population and are now struggling to maintain a modest standard of living,” said Bennett, who has worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and U.S. Forces Korea.
While Kim’s status as the third-generation supreme leader gives him absolute control over the country, reports indicate that he had to fight for this status, having been named heir apparent just a year before his father’s death. Kim, who was the world’s youngest leader when he took power, oversaw purges of perceived opponents, including his powerful uncle, Jang Song-thaek, while promoting a new generation of leaders.
Since then, there have been few public appearances by those who question Kim’s authority. But as he allocates increasing sums from the world’s most sanctioned nation to military achievements, and South Korea’s economic growth accelerates, Bennett argued that Kim’s decision last year to abandon unification risks fueling renewed opposition.
“When Kim abandoned unification a year and a half ago, he also dashed the hopes of many of his elites, who had hoped that unification would eventually offer them a way of life more like that of South Korea,” Bennett said. “They ultimately concluded that the Kim family regime was incapable of meeting their needs, and that leaked information from North Korea indicated that South Koreans were living much better lives than they were.”
The situation is further complicated by the North Korean military presence in Russia, estimated at 15,000 troops by US and South Korean intelligence services.
“In North Korea, the Kim family regime evaluates each person based on their political reliability,” Bennett said. Generally speaking, individuals are considered the hard core, the waverers, or the hostile class. When Kim decided to send troops to Russia, he didn’t send hostile soldiers because, in most cases, they aren’t trained in firearms.
When he decided to send special forces, he essentially decided to send the sons of elite families—the middle class,” Bennett said, noting that many of these “middle class” families have “only one son.” After a period of withholding information about the deployment, which Bennett said included isolating several elite families, Kim’s decision to open up in April and begin honoring the families of those killed abroad may have another motivation: to address grievances.
In any case, Bennett warned that rising tensions within North Korea’s seemingly impregnable fortress could push Kim to adopt more extreme measures.
“No one really knows how severe the instability in North Korea will be, not even Kim himself,” Bennett said. But he could decide at some point to divert the attention of his elite. He could then carry out a limited nuclear strike.
Like Garlauskas, Bennett has also participated in military exercises to analyze a North Korean attack scenario. The result, he said, is that “the current US deterrence strategy may not deter Kim from launching such a nuclear attack.”
He added: “This is especially true as their nuclear weapons stockpile grows. Therefore, the United States cannot ignore the tensions and risks on the Korean Peninsula.”
Coming Back to the Table
As Trump learned during his first administration with North Korea, and as he continues to grapple with the Russo-Ukrainian and Gaza wars, achieving peace is easier said than done.
After a period of heightened tensions in 2017, Trump became the first sitting US president to meet with a North Korean leader the following year, raising hopes of an agreement that included denuclearization for peace and sanctions relief. But after two more meetings, the process collapsed in 2019, and tensions quickly returned to the Korean Peninsula.
However, there are lessons to be learned from this process.
Garlauskas said: “If Kim wants to reach an agreement, he will have to accept, at least in principle, that it is an interim step toward complete denuclearization, to allow the United States and South Korea to negotiate, just as the United States and South Korea will have to accept that Kim will not easily give up the capabilities in which he has invested and from which he derives significant leverage.”
Bennett advised Washington and Seoul to review their approaches, moving from completely neutralizing Kim’s advanced program to “halting, or at least seriously curbing, nuclear weapons development,” a goal he called “more appropriate given that North Korea is unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons.”
Observers have also argued that Trump’s decision in June to launch direct strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, a country engaged in negotiations with the United States despite lacking its own nuclear arsenal, only prompted Kim to tighten his grip on his own arsenal.
However, there are some positive signs that diplomacy is possible. For one thing, Trump and Kim have avoided direct criticism of each other despite the escalating tensions.
Kim’s influential sister, Kim Yo Jong, deputy director of the Workers’ Party of Korea’s Propaganda and Information Department, said last month that her brother’s relationship with Trump was “good.” During his meeting with his South Korean counterpart on Monday, Trump claimed to have “excellent” relations with the North Korean leader.
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung has also played a supportive role. The new progressive South Korean leader reaffirmed that dialogue with Pyongyang was a priority after a period of hostility under his ousted predecessor, President Yoon Suk-yeol. During his meeting with Trump, he described the US president as “the only person capable of resolving” the inter-Korean issue.
Jane H. Lee, president of the East-West Center in Honolulu and co-host of the BBC World Service’s “Lazarus Flight,” said the alignment between Trump and Lee Jae-myung “certainly opens up a potential opportunity for the kind of diplomacy with North Korea that we saw in 2018 and 2019.”
She cautioned, however, that the current situation was “very different from 2019,” with Kim “focused on strengthening and diversifying his weapons arsenal, billions of dollars in cyber theft, and assistance from Russia.” She added that all of this “has undoubtedly helped him move closer to achieving his goals and the position he aspires to occupy in future negotiations with President Trump.”
Jane H. Lee told Newsweek: “If these negotiations were difficult in 2018 and 2019, they are even more so six or seven years later, because North Korea has focused almost all of its efforts on implementing this program, despite the U.S. government’s tireless efforts to try to cut off financial flows to it through cyberattacks.”
Thus, while believing that “the strong alignment between the U.S. and South Korean presidents” “would pave the way for eventual diplomacy with North Korea,” she also stated that such a process would only occur after “a series of events” in which all three parties could demonstrate a concrete commitment to a new peace process.
“And I think North Korea will continue to ally itself with Russia as long as it serves Kim and Putin’s interests,” she said. “And we will see North Korea continue to reject South Korean overtures for the time being.”
“But just as these leaders are thinking a few steps ahead, we must prepare for the possibility of diplomacy in the future,” she added.