Author: Reuben F. Johnson

Reaching For the North

In late August 2025, US President Donald Trump held a summit in the White House Oval Office with the Republic of Korea (ROK) President, Lee Jae Myung. The encounter was not just an ordinary, regular meeting between the heads of state of the US and the ROK, the country being a long-time valued and stalwart US ally. It was seen by many as a crucial interaction for the recently elected South Korean leader.

Lee’s June 2025 victory at the polls had come after a six-month constitutional crisis in the Asian democracy, which had set the stage for what could have been an unhappy sit-down with the US president. The post-impeachment period of political conflict that led to Lee’s election had even prompted Trump to make less than cheerful social media postings just hours before the two leaders met – potentially jeopardising the relations between the two before they even had a chance to meet.

In these posts prior to their meeting, the US President had pointedly inquired on-line about Lee’s initiatives that had advanced the country’s situation out of the December 2024 imposition of martial law and subsequent crisis – and had led to his election. This had created the concern that Lee’s session with the US president could turn into a diplomatic squabble that would mirror the February 2025 confrontation with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, or the contentious encounter Trump had engaged in with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Lee addressed the point later, saying “before I met with President Trump today, he posted on Truth Social a very threatening post, which I felt. And then during the press gaggle, he mentioned about the Korean government’s investigations regarding the previous government, and he [Trump] mentioned that he would look into the search and seizure of US bases,” Lee said later on the same day that they both met in remarks he made at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).[1]

“And so, my staff was worried that we might face a Zelensky moment,” continued Lee. “But I already knew that I would not face that kind of situation,” he added, noting he prepared well in advance of their conversation by reading President Trump’s 1987 book, “The Art of the Deal.”

When Lee finally sat down in the Oval Office he demonstrated premier relationship-building and leadership skills in the mould of NATO Secretary General  Mark Rutte. He approached the US president in a flattering and charming manner – even complimenting Trump about the Oval Office’s “bright and beautiful” appearance that was the product of Trump’s post-election renovations. He deftly avoided the mention of any subject that could have sparked a disagreement between them.

One of the potential points of contention was that Trump had criticised the ROK for taking advantage of the US in its defence planning. There are tens of thousands of US troops based on the DMZ, he has pointed out before. They are of course there to protect the South Korean half of the peninsula from the armed forces of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) that line the border to the north. Trump’s feeling on this matter is very similar to the statements he has often made about NATO European nations refusing to shoulder their part of the burden in their defence spending – not paying their “fair share” of the cost of defending Europe.

Trump had even raised this point during his first term (2016-2020) at a 2019 political rally in Florida. He did not mention the ROK by name, but there was little doubt which nation he was referencing when he said, “I won’t say the country, but one country we spend a lot of money on defending — [in] very dangerous territory — and it costs us $5 billion.” This was his way of calling on Seoul to pay an equitable share of the cost of that US troop presence, which is an agenda item he has carried on into his second term.[2]

At the same rally Trump complained the country in question only contributed around $500 million of that total cost figure and then stated, “We lose four and a half billion dollars to defend a country that’s rich as hell and probably doesn’t like us too much.” Trump also said he told “my people [to] call them and ask for the rest of it and they’ll pay. They’ll pay.”

It is now six years later, and Trump today has said less on the subject than he did in 2019. Lee realised that the way to side-step that potential argument was to deftly avoid it and other potentially explosive topics. Instead, he chose to focus on another subject that interests Trump even more. For Lee it is also an issue at the top of his wish list as the ROK president. That high priority, “hot button” for both presidents is quite clear: re-building a relationship with the DPRK.

Lee therefore chose to focus on placating Trump and to praise the American leader for the work he has done and the political capital he had invested in engaging with the current DPRK leader, Kim Jong Un. Lee, knowing that in most scenarios it is not possible for him to interact with Kim on his own, called on Trump to broker a peace between the ROK and its northern neighbor. “The only person who can make progress is you Mr. President”, said Lee. “If you become the peacemaker, then I will assist you by being a pacemaker.”  Lee even made a joke about building a Trump Tower in North Korea and playing golf there.

In this his first interaction with Trump since being elected Lee appears to have employed a “first step, second step, third step” strategy. Step one was to discuss trade between the two nations and to make an offer that would be hard for Trump to turn down so he could diffuse the tariffs issue. Step two was to discuss the continued need for the presence of the US troops that are based in South Korea. Step three was the level of ROK defense spending. Here Lee’s objective was to present an outline for future ROK defence outlays that will allow Trump to claim that the US is – or will be soon – getting a fair deal and not being taken advantage of by Seoul.

Avoiding subjects that could have sparked an unfriendly exchange required no small measure of navigational skill on Lee’s part. The ROK President is a left-wing leader and shares little in the way of political philosophy with Trump. There are endless possibilities for the two of them to engage in a disagreement and end up traversing into some combative cul-de-sac, so avoiding that pitfall was a considerable accomplishment. Furthermore, Lee also realised that improving ties with Kim is one issue where the Korean and US leader both have a common vision that rises above traditional differences in governing or political philosophy.  This is one of the key reasons it became a major talking point in their discussions. It is probably the one issue on which the two leaders would not disagree.

Lee desires a dialogue with Kim in particular and to create a better relationship with the North in general, and so he emphasised this interest in bridging the gap with the DPRK. This was purposeful as he knows Trump has similar ambitions, which is why he often brings up the DPRK leader in his discussions. “I spent a lot of free time with him [Kim], talking about things that we probably aren’t supposed to talk about,” Trump said when he met Lee in the Oval Office. “I get along with him really well. I look forward to meeting with Kim Jong Un in the appropriate future.”

The unhappy reality for Lee, however, is he definitely wants a better relationship with Kim, but the feeling is also definitely not mutual. There are any number of incentives that the ROK has made use of in the past to try and bring the DPRK leader to the negotiating table. But at this point in time, Lee realises if he could convince Trump to break the ice for him and act on his behalf then he has a far greater probability of gaining access to Kim than any previous South Korean leader.

At the same time, the US president is all about trade, what is good for America and making business deals. Knowing that this is Trump’s orientation, the South Korean delegation negotiating tariffs with Trump had managed to secure a 15 per cent deal (having been threatened with a 25 per cent tariff rate). This was done by agreeing to invest US $350 billion in the US, which includes a US $150 billion to help the US shipbuilding industry.[3]

The latter point is of prime importance and again shows Lee had done his homework before he and his delegation came to Washington. The size of the US Navy fleet is shrinking and continues to be outpaced by the rate at which the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) adds new vessels to its inventory. In addition, just a few hours after this White House meeting, the ROK’s major carrier, Korean Air, announced the purchase of 103 Boeing airliners. This is another major export order for the US plane maker that Trump can take credit for and is in that category of bringing back jobs from overseas and creating them in America that he likes talking about so much.[4]

The sale includes 787, 777 and 737 passenger jets, according to a joint statement released by the two companies. The new jets will come at a “pivotal moment” and will significantly modernise the South Korean flag carrier’s fleet. This will also ensure that it stays competitive as it merges with Asiana Airlines, said Korean Air boss Walter Cho. “The US and South Korea ‘need each other’” for trade, Trump told reporters with Lee nearby. “We love what they do, we love their products, we love their ships, we love a lot of the things they make,” he added.

 

Unfavourable Conditions 

If Trump has one ambition above all others in terms of his legacy it is to be known in the future as the most prolific peacemaker to ever sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office. As such he looks upon the challenge of coming to an agreement with Kim that would de-fuse the volatile situation on the Korean peninsula and convince Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear ambitions as his most significant, but unfinished, project.

Speaking about Kim, Trump said “someday I’ll see him. I look forward to seeing him. He was very good with me,” he told reporters after his White House meeting with the ROK’s Lee, adding that he hoped talks between him and the North Korean leader could happen before the end of the year.

The US and the ROK attempting to create a united effort to link up with Kim and formulate a new peace agreement with the DPRK sounds like a clever idea. The world’s most powerful nation and one of the most innovative and technologically advanced countries in all of Asia combining forces should on paper be able to offer Kim almost anything his heart desires. But there are some concrete reasons why the entire concept of North Korea changing its spots and having an active, mutually beneficial and productive relationship with the ROK is today more unlikely to happen than it has ever been in the history of relations between the two Koreas.

The first reason is that despite the three summits between Trump and Kim in the past and the efforts by his Secretary of State in his first term, Mike Pompeo, the proverbial dial has hardly moved in the state of relations that Pyongyang has with the US. Despite these three meetings between the US and DPRK leaders and an enormous amount of time, effort and resources expended on the entire enterprise very little was ever accomplished.

The chaos caused by the June 2018 Trump-Kim  summit held in Singapore is still bemoaned in the island city-state more than seven years later.  In 2024 on one of my many trips to the country – this particular visit to take part in the Shangri-La Dialogue Asia-Pacific Security Summit – I experienced a perfect example.  I was stuck in some unusually horrific traffic due to road blocks, security checkpoints and all vehicles being stopped at certain intersections to permit motorcades of the major VIPs to pass unimpeded.

When I asked the driver if this particular traffic mess was any better or any worse than what he had seen before in Singapore, his reply was “if you think this is bad you should have been here when Trump met with that Korean guy.” They cannot remember the name, but they remember the mayhem caused by the first of the three meetings between the US and DPRK leaders.

The point as to what – if anything – these meetings between the leaders have accomplished bears deliberating.  Under conditions as they exist today, as well as what form they will take far into the future, it is hard to imagine that there would ever be a major rapprochement between the two Koreas. If it were to happen it would most likely have to be preceded by a dramatic alteration in the relations between the DPRK and the US. Trump keeps talking about trying to achieve just that. If another meeting with Kim takes place as he often speaks about, it would be the fourth time Trump has met the North Korean leader, but it is unrealistic to expect major progress of the kind he is hoping for.

Trump has managed to create a close and potentially historically pivotal relationship, but the potential for achieving anything in the way of progress remains to be seen. At their first meeting in Singapore, the two nations seemed to be achieving something of substance when they agreed to the “complete denuclearisation” of the Korean peninsula. Trump declared the summit a success, but observers subsequently warned that, as the ROK is half of the peninsula, it would have to end its dependence on the US nuclear umbrella. Creating that vulnerability is something no ROK president – not even Lee – would be willing to give up in exchange for better ties with the North.

The US and North Korea have not held any high-level talks for about six years, and even when they met the two sides were unable to agree on a number of issues, most prevalent among them how much sanctions relief Pyongyang should receive for taking steps to dismantle its nuclear programme. The DPRK has also warned that new US sanctions against senior figures in the regime that were imposed in late 2018, six months after its leader Kim Jong Un held these historic talks with Trump, were a “deliberate provocation” that could derail any attempts by the DPRK to denuclearise.

Pyongyang also said Washington was guilty of a “grave miscalculation” if it believed that applying more economic pressure on the DPRK would force it to abandon its nuclear weapons programme. Instead, further sanctions could “block the path to denuclearisation on the Korean peninsula forever”, DPRK official spokesmen had said.[5]

Thus, the nuclear stalemate continues and with almost no signs of an opening that could change that dynamic. Any hope for a breakthrough with the man Trump once derisively referred to as “little rocket man” appears to be as dim as ever.

 

The Major and Seemingly Immovable Obstacles

With this overarching situation of the US and DPRK seemingly at loggerheads on bringing peace to the Korean peninsula, there are also several points specific to the ROK-DPRK relationship that are equally immovable. There is no question that the ROK desires a change in the situation on the peninsula and would be willing to make considerable effort to these ends. But what Seoul lacks in the DPRK is a willing partner with reciprocal intentions. Instead, the radical totalitarian regime has shown increasingly less and less inclination to make any concessions or to even engage with its southern neighbour.

More often than not, the DPRK’s direction of travel has been the complete opposite. Rigidity, retrenchment, inflexibility and a tendency towards greater rather than diminished isolation.

Some of the major points that are the most visible examples:

Rice Bowls That Cannot be Broken – The negotiations with the DPRK over the dismantling of its nuclear weapons programme have been on-going for years. This is perhaps the main issue that must be resolved before the DPRK and ROK could assume something on the order of normalised relations. Conventional wisdom is that the North will not bend on this matter due to their normal intransigence and not wanting to give up the “nuclear card.” Nations that have nukes are never invaded is the lesson they seem to have taken on board.

But there are some other more basic obstructions that are perhaps even more formidable. When discussing the negotiations with the DPRK, those on the US side who are familiar with all the internal forces at work will tell you the following. The people – the scientists, engineers, designers and their families – plus the military and government officials who work on the nuclear programme live inside of special enclaves where those inside enjoy a privileged existence. These persons live in a world that the majority of DPRK citizens cannot even begin to dream about.

Imagine, said one individual I spoke to, “that you are now in a place where there are real chemist shops. And when you go into them – they actually have all the medicines you need. Imagine you have groceries and other shops that are actually filled with goods you will not find anywhere in a regular North Korean city or community. Then imagine your children also benefit from this and they attend schools where there are real learning materials in the classrooms, personal computers that really work, and school lunches that actually have nutritional value. If the nuclear programme goes away, then this heavenly sanctuary that everyone connected to the effort disappears as well. That is a powerful motivator for all the people involved – particularly military and Korean Worker’s Party officials – to make sure it never does ever go away.”

These are rice bowls that no one is ever going to allow to be broken.

Pyongyang’s New Cash Machine – During the particularly devastating economic periods in the DPRK, Pyongyang looked to the ROK to provide badly-needed food and other economic aid. During the Sunshine Policy period in the early 2000s, South Korea offered humanitarian aid and increased economic cooperation, including projects like the Kaesong Industrial Complex.[6]

At that time this aid was controversial in the ROK as critics argued it propped up the DPRK regime rather than promoting reunification of the two nations.  Pyongyang has since shifted to ending economic cooperation with the South.  In early 2024, North Korea voted to abolish all economic cooperation agreements with South Korea. This decision followed Pyongyang’s declaration of Seoul as its main enemy and the termination of all agencies dedicated to reunification.

There are several causes for this cutting off all economic aid from the ROK, but the most important of these is mass amounts of cash that have recently been funnelled to the DPRK by Moscow for its support of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia “has all the money that Kim needs to keep his regime afloat,” said one long-time North Korea watcher in Moscow I spoke to. And Putin cares little for the DPRK continuing with its nuclear programme. This stands in sharp contrast to the US, the ROK and others who make shutting down the nuclear project the number one pre-condition for more economic assistance and sanctions relief.

“North Korea is now a more important ally for Russia than Iran or China,” said Oleg Ignatov, senior Russia analyst for Crisis Group, another expert on the subject. As long as Russia needs massive amounts of artillery shells and other munitions, soldiers to send to the front to fight with the Russian Army and labourers to be sent to work on major Russian construction projects, Kim will have all the cash flow he needs. For instance, Kim receives US $2000 per month per North Korean soldier sent to fight in Russia. This is more money coming into the country every month than Kim has seen in a long time.[7]

Ideological War on the South – Looking at how the Pyongyang’s propaganda machine has been reporting on the six months of a constitutional crisis that more or less ended with Lee’s election in June 2025, experts on the DPRK have described the coverage of these ROK internal affairs as “subdued and limited.” This official lack of interest has taken place in parallel with Pyongyang continuing s ongoing criticism of Seoul on almost all regional security issues. Since all media in the DPRK are state-controlled and exist solely to telegraph state policy, the conclusion is that Pyongyang remains uninterested in improving relations with the new South Korean government. President Lee’s conciliatory gestures are essentially falling on deaf ears.

The official title of the sister of the DPRK’s strongman, Kim Yo Jong, is Vice Department Director of the Central Committee of the Korean Worker’s Party. This year she wrote a letter to be carried on the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) webpage at the end of July. In it she caustically blasted her southern counterpart for trying to foster positivity across the demilitarised zone by “suspension of loudspeaker broadcasting against the DPRK, a halt to leaflet scattering and the allowance of individual ROK people for tours of the DPRK.”[8]

“If the ROK, which had stoked the atmosphere of extreme confrontation in the past after unilaterally declaring the DPRK as its principal enemy, expected that it could reverse all the results it had made with a few sentimental words, nothing is more serious miscalculation than this,” Kim Yo Jong wrote.

The new ROK President has made improving relations on the peninsula a key goal of his government since winning election in June. He has scaled back anti-DPRK propaganda, reinforced the work of the nation’s Unification Ministry, and proposed inviting DPRK regime officials to international summits. The DPRK, however, says South Korean leadership is “spinning a daydream” if it thinks the regime is interested in meeting.

“We clarify once again the official stand that no matter what policy is adopted and whatever proposal is made in Seoul, we have no interest in it and there is neither the reason to meet nor the issue to be discussed with the ROK,” Kim Yo Jong wrote for KCNA distribution. If there was ever even a glimmer of hope of the two Koreas engaging in some high-level dialogue and/or diplomacy, it appears to be a completely dead issue at this point.

Kim Yo Jong has a reputation of a strong and fiercely dictatorial functionary. She has been called “the most feared woman in all of North Korea.” Her word is law, for all intents and purposes, so any hope of the DPRK ever meeting with the ROK administration has nothing to do with any actions or proposals on the part of Seoul. The matter now rests solely with whatever influence US President Trump might have on the issue, but he could only move the ball, so to speak should he and Kim Jong Un ever meet up again.

None of this should be much of surprise to those who have been watching what has been happening in the DPRK for the last year. In October 2024 and several months before Lee was elected, the DPRK blew up all the remaining road and rail links it still shared with the ROK. These roads had long been virtually unused, so their eradication is more symbolic than anything else. But by their destruction Pyongyang sends a very clear message – there is no desire to negotiate with Seoul. Kim’s regime, given its recently growing alliance with Russia and the other factors listed above is telegraphing that it now feels it has no use for closer ties with the South.[9]

 

Conclusions

While no one would wish to completely discount the possibility for peace on the peninsula and that the two Koreas could find some forum, some mechanism for maintaining a dialogue with one another, today this eventuality seems remote in the extreme. The situation recalls the late famous Israeli writer Amos Elon who wrote prolifically about the seemingly intractable dilemma of bringing the Israeli and Palestinian peoples into some reconciliation. For years he covered the many twists and turns the two sides took as they attempted to find a formula to live beside one another instead of being in a constant state of war.

He was not terribly optimistic – more like pessimistic – and his writings reflected his belief that there were structural and cultural aspects within the two societies that were probably always going to work against as opposed to in favour of a peace settlement. One of his oldest conclusions made not long after the famous Camp David Accords was “it is always easier to make peace with someone who would know what to do with it.” What he was communicating was that the process of one side being in conflict with the other was so much a part of their respective identities that a peaceful solution to the conflict would always remain out of reach.

This is a case of there being powerful tendencies within the two societies that worked to inhibit the formation of a lasting set of agreements that would permit them to move forward in co-existence with one another. These forces, with a few exceptions, are almost entirely internal to the two peoples. Many other nations outside of their societies are willing to go to some lengths to break down these barriers, regardless of how many others have failed before them to do so.

But in the case of the ROK peace initiatives with the DPRK, resolution remains elusive due to forces outside of the two Koreas as much as it does because of the North’s identity so tied up being in conflict with the South. The short version is that there are no major external actors trying to unify the two Koreas, because no one wants the DPRK to change from what it is today into something else.

During the years I spent in the PRC I took the opportunity to speak with several colleagues based in Beijing about the DPRK and why Beijing kept propping them up economically every year. The overall theme of my inquiries was why the DPRK never changed from the world’s most isolationist and totalitarian Stalinist state into something more modern, open and less repressive. Conventional wisdom is there are no end of problems that could be solved or at least alleviated by an evolution of the political system.

The most prevalent of these is that the country cannot feed itself. This situation is an old story. The all-time worst point was the 1990s famine, the “Arduous March” (고난의 행군), when two million or more of the population starved to death. Conditions since have improved – barely – and to this day much of the country is starving at least half the time. The UN World Food Program estimates that 10.7 million people, or more than 40 per cent of the population, is malnourished.

But even with this precarious internal situation change was just not possible, I was told. “It is not in the nature of the regime,” and with the relentless, over-powering propaganda and the pervasive cult of personality of the Kim ruling family, “it would not be in the nature of the population to in any way even think for a moment that the country had to change.”

The identity of the state and the image of the “Kim Family Regime” or KFR, as many US military officials refer to the DPRK dictatorship as, are indistinguishable from one another in the eyes of the population. The current occupant, Kim Jong Un, is the son of the previous dictator, Kim Jong Il, and the grandson of the nation’s founder, Kim Il Sung, who is still worshiped as a god. It is one of the longest-ruling political dynasties in the world.

A year or so before I began conducting my own personal inquiry, the late Christopher Hitchens took a trip to Pyongyang, capital of the “Hermit Kingdom”, as the DPRK has been called for years – the name denotes the nation’s stubborn resistance to any external influences.). Writing in Vanity Fair about the daily life and the plight of the ordinary North Korean he observed that the country was not unlike what was once said of the pre-WWI Germanic state of Prussia. That “it was not a country that had an army, but that it was an army that had a country.”

In the case of the Korea run by the Kim family regime, this is an army that is not small in its size and makeup. The DPRK’s military ranks as the world’s fourth largest, with 1.3 million active-duty personnel and 7.6 million reservists. They total a third of the total population of only 25.9 million. This explains another passage in Hitchens’ long profile of the DPRK: “You see military uniforms on about every 10th person. Partly this is a means of [imposing] additional regimentation for the society, and partly it’s a solution to the unemployment problem.” 

And partly it also consumes huge sums of money. In 2024 defense spending accounted for 16 per cent of the DPRK state budget.

Up until now and despite the big defense budgets, the hardware in the DPRK’s arsenal has largely been outdated. However, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has come riding to the rescue. He has become dependent on the DPRK for millions of artillery shells and other munitions and – more recently – thousands of soldiers to send to the front lines to fight against Ukraine’s military.

In return for providing both cannon shells and cannon fodder for Moscow to wage unending war on Ukraine, this former KGB Lt. Col. who rules Russia is now willing to provide the DPRK with all manner of defense technology. This includes support for Kim’s ballistic missile programs, new fighter aircraft, deliveries of oil – and so on. Everything that the North Korean leader needs to keep building and modernizing his already massive military machine.

On top of it all, the DPRK is one of nine countries in the world that possesses nuclear weapons – and Kim has made “growing” this program a priority. No one really knows how many warheads he has, and no one knows whether or how soon Kim would be able to place one of his warheads on top of a ballistic missile.

The fear in foreign capitals that Kim might someday be able to attack another nation with a nuclear strike is increasing as this event becomes more possible and less hypothetical. Last October, then-South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol publicly showcased his country’s Hyunmoo-5 conventionally-armed ballistic missile, which is designed to penetrate North Korean underground command bunkers.

“If North Korea attempts to use nuclear weapons, it will face the resolute and overwhelming response of our military and the ROK-US alliance,” Yoon said during the unveiling of the weapon, referring to the United States as the South’s primary military partner. “The North Korean regime must now break free from the delusion that nuclear weapons will protect them.” But greater than the fear in some circles that Kim might use a nuclear weapon is the fear that his regime could implode. This would create a sudden and unplanned re-unification of the Korean peninsula to be governed by the South Korean half of the nation.

“This is the great nightmare for every nation that has a stake in what happens to North Korea next,” said more than one of those persons in Beijing – both Chinese and expat – that I spoke to on the subject in the early 2000s. Everyone was singing the same song: “North Korea will never change because no one wants it to. And those that could be most affected want it to stay just as it is.”

The reasons are simple. If the DPRK collapses, then the unified nation would continue to be an ally of the US – even more so than before. For a US ally to now border on Russia and the PRC is a nightmare for those two nations. Then there is Japan. The populations of both Koreas have traditional enmity towards the Japanese dating back centuries.

The one nation not part of the region but that also has a major interest in what happens on the peninsula is the US. But a DPRK that collapses under its own horrendously bad management of its country is also not Washington’s first choice. Interviewed in 2006 in The Atlantic, US Army Special Forces Col. David Maxwell described the likely aftermath and staggering cost of such an eventuality, saying, “It could be the mother of all humanitarian relief operations.”

But the one country that dreads the possibility most of all is none other than South Korea. Seoul would have to assume responsibility for the – by comparison with the South – moonscape that is the infrastructure, agricultural status and overall conditions of the DPRK.

In Berlin I had spoken more than once with German officials familiar with the negative economic impact of integrating the former communist German Democratic Republic into the Federal Republic. They described their South Korean colleagues as horrified at the prospect of having the North – far poorer than the South than East Germany was in comparison with the West – abruptly fall into their hands.

“The South Koreans have had people here in Germany studying the aftereffects of our reunification for more than 30 years,” said one ministry functionary in Berlin. “What their research reveals to them scares them.” Therefore, it is far easier and far cheaper, said one colleague in Beijing some years ago, “to keep doing what has been done for decades. Food aid, economic support, trade incentives, energy assistance – whatever little the NGOs and other aid organizations are permitted by the Kim regime to keep providing.”

“This will keep working – to keep the place from collapsing – until one day it stops working. Problem is,” he said, “is that no one wants to think about what to do when it does stop working. There will be plenty of choices then – and all of them bad ones.” 

 

Recommendations

1. Following the DPRK’s decision to cut off communication with the South, the ROK might be well-served to think about how to go over the heads of the DPRK government and develop means of sending information through channels that would reach the population in the North at large. The present administration in the ROK has decided to curtail those activities – leaflets, loudspeaker announcements, etc. – but it may be time to reconsider this course of action.
2. What happens to North Korean soldiers sent to Ukraine to fight on the side of the Russian Army and what happens to North Korean labourers who are sent off to Russia to perform what is essentially hard labour is nothing short of horrific. Those conditions and the manner in which the DPRK government is sentencing these people to certain death on the battlefield or a slow death as forced labourers needs to be publicised to the extent possible.
3. Networks of North Koreans who have escaped to the West and have made their stories public do exist, but their histories of what conditions they observed and how they escaped the North could be publicised more aggressively and more effectively coordinated. In addition, there is more reporting today about the conditions of North Koreans sent to Russia as some of them have escaped military service or these labour colonies and have made their way to the West. Making use of these persons who can bear witness to what they have seen and experienced are needed to make the world outside of the Koreas understand the extent of the Kim regime’s barbarity.
4. The ROK could consider a pressure strategy to contain the DPRK that parallels the proposed actions for the US Government that were put forward several years ago by the Atlantic Council. It consists of four components aimed at advancing serious diplomacy: enforcement of existing UN Security Council resolutions and US laws; diplomatic engagements with third countries to put pressure on Kim’s regime; identifying new authorities, designations, and pressures on cyber, financial, trade, and human rights; and conducting ongoing research within the US intelligence agencies to review what has and has not worked with the DPRK in the past.
5. A more recent development now makes it imperative that transfers of weapons technology from Russia to the DPRK be monitored and blocked to the extent possible, even if it means boarding merchant ships at sea and seizing cargo. If the DPRK were to receive the latest in Russian ballistic missile design methods the entire region could be under the danger of an attack by Pyongyang, potentially even a nuclear strike.

 

Author: Reuben F. Johnson 

Director of Asia Research Centre, Korea Fellow, 

Casimir Pulaski Foundation

 

Supported by the Korea Foundation

 

Bibliography

[1] Statesmen’s Forum: His Excellency Lee Jae Myung, President of the Republic of Korea, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHcBSwe-s2M, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 25 August 2025. 

[2] William Gallo, “Trump Reignites Cost-Sharing Dispute With S. Korea,” Voice of America, 9 May 2019.

[3] Cynthia Kim and Yena Park, “Exclusive: Top South Korea official says policy institutions to lead on $350 billion US fund, watching FX,” Reuters, 4 September 2025.

[4] Osmond Chia, “Korean Air to buy 103 Boeing jets as Trump pressures trading partners,” BBC, 25 August 2025.

[5] Justin McCurry, “North Korea warns US sanctions could derail plans to denuclearise,” The Guardian, 17 December 2018.

[6] “What is the Kaesong Industrial Complex,” BBC, 10 February 2016.

[7] Taejun Kang, “Russia pays North Korean soldiers about $2,000 a month: South’s spy agency,” Radio Free Asia, 23 October 2024.

[8] “Press Statement of Kim Yo Jong, Vice Department Director of C.C., WPK”, KCNA Watch, 28 July 2025.

[9] Justin McCurry, “North Korea blows up roads linking it with South, prompting warning shots at border,” The Guardian, 15 October 2024.