By Ramon Pacheco Pardo
6.6.2025
Introduction
With the liberal Lee Jae-myung winning South Korea’s presidential election, the expectation is that the new president will seek to improve Seoul’s relationship with North Korea. After all, Lee has accused Yoon Suk-yeol, his conservative predecessor, of mismanaging relations with Pyongyang and thus increasing the security threat to South Korea. Having said that, inter-Korean relations have significantly deteriorated since the last round of inter-Korean diplomacy in 2018-2019. Kim Jong-un has signalled that he does not seek reunification with South Korea anymore, North Korea has decisively sided with Russia in support of its invasion of Ukraine, Pyongyang is receiving economic support from Russia and China and the North Korean leadership was ultimately critical of what it perceived to be Moon Jae-in’s dishonest approach to diplomacy during the 2018-2019 round of inter-Korean and United States’ (US)-North Korea negotiations. Lee himself has acknowledged that resuming diplomacy with North Korea seems to be complicated in the short term.
What are the views of North Korea regarding Lee Jae-myung?
At the time of writing, the North Korean state media has only barely acknowledged Lee’s election as the new South Korean president in a very short story also making reference to Yoon’s martial law declaration. In recent months, North Korea’s media has made scant mention to the political situation in South Korea, criticising Yoon’s martial law declaration but without commenting on other developments. It thus remains unclear whether North Korea sees Lee as a change from Yoon or simply as a continuation of what it perceives to be South Korea’s “hostile” policy.
Having said that, Pyongyang’s actions and statements about Moon and by extension the liberal camp in South Korea allow us to infer how North Korea feels about a Lee presidency, at least in these initial stages. The Kim Jong-un regime accused Moon of overselling a potential agreement between North Korea and the United States following the failure of the 2019 Hanoi summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump. The Kim regime also implied that South Korea may not have been as interested in resuming inter-Korean ties as much as the Moon government indicated. Thus, it seems that Kim’s decision to move away from Korean reunification was not only linked to Pyongyang’s poor relations with Seoul during the Yoon presidency – but also to a perception that South Korea’s liberal camp will also prioritise other foreign policy goals over strengthening inter-Korean ties. Unless North Korea clearly indicates differently, this seems to be its perception of a Lee government for the time being.
What are the key short-term priorities for the inter-Korean relationship?
Throughout the presidential campaign and also since taking office, Lee has made clear that he wants to resume dialogue and diplomacy with North Korea. Even though Lee has not made better inter-Korean ties a decades-long goal, which was the case for previous liberal presidents such as Kim Dae-jung or Moon Jae-in, the new president has also indicated that he believes that engagement can bring more stability to the Korean Peninsula. With Pyongyang accelerating development of its nuclear and missile programmes in recent months thanks to Russian support, Lee has a clear incentive to seek to reduce tensions in the Korean Peninsula. In this respect, Lee’s appointment of former Minister of Unification Lee Jong-seok as National Intelligence Service chief is a clear statement of intent, considering that this could reopen the inter-Korean intelligence channel as a means of communication. Lee has also indicated that he wants to restore the 2018 inter-Korean military agreement signed by Moon, focusing on reducing military tensions in the inter-Korean border.
At the same time, the recently inaugurated South Korean president has also made clear that he seeks to boost South Korea’s deterrence against North Korea. This is unsurprising: Moon, the previous liberal president in office, emphasised “peace through strength”, or the idea that a strong deterrent can serve to boost South Korea’s hand in any negotiation with North Korea. Kim Dae-jung’s Sunshine Policy also included a deterrence component. Lee has already indicated that deterrence will include both boosting South Korea’s own capabilities, as well as working closely with the United States for the ROK-US alliance to continue to be a deterrence pillar. Having said that, the Trump administration has indicated that it expects South Korea to be one of the US allies to pick up a larger share of the burden of protecting itself. Trump administration officials have also indicated that the US forces in the Korean Peninsula will be subject to “strategic flexibility”, meaning that they could be deployed elsewhere – including during a Taiwan contingency. Therefore, it seems that Seoul will have to rely less on its alliance with Washington to deter Pyongyang compared to the past.
Finally, Lee also needs to avoid South Korea being by-passed by the Trump administration and the Kim regime on Korean Peninsula security matters. Trump has indicated that he would like to resume his summit diplomacy with Kim. And as US peace negotiations with Russia indicate, the Trump administration is willing to negotiate directly with its (supposed) foes even to the detriment of its (supposed) partners. The Lee government has surely taken note of this, hence why mixing the potential resumption of diplomacy with a strong deterrent is also a way to avoid South Korea by-passing.
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This Korea Chair Explains note is part of a post-election series including notes on the priorities of President-elect Lee Jae-myung and perspectives from the United States, China and Japan.
The views expressed in this publication are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy (CSDS) or the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).
