Join War on the Rocks and gain access to content trusted by policymakers, military leaders, and strategic thinkers worldwide.
The United States and South Korea have converged on the idea of dialogue with North Korea. But can it work? Will it?
U.S. President Donald Trump has repeated his intention to meet North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, while Elbridge Colby, the current undersecretary of defense for policy, expressed support in December 2024 for focusing on “limiting the range of North Korean [intercontinental ballistic missiles].” During the recent U.S.-South Korean summit in late August, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung also asked Trump to play a role in making peace in the Korean Peninsula, including efforts to hold a future U.S.-North Korean summit. The United States and South Korea agreed to pursue the denuclearization of North Korea in a phased manner.
In response, Pyongyang has rejected the phased denuclearization proposal, insisting that an essential condition for negotiation with the United States is its acceptance of North Korea’s status as a nuclear power. After Trump and Lee announced their intention to negotiate with Kim, North Korea began building bargaining leverage by showcasing its modernized missile production capacity and advanced long-range missile technology. On Sept. 4, 2025, Kim also met General Secretary Xi Jinping of China to discuss strategic cooperation on international and regional issues, likely including Xi’s emphasis on peace and stability on the peninsula. These developments could indicate North Korea’s preparation to pursue nuclear arms reduction negotiation with the United States, based on China’s understanding and support. After his return from Beijing, Kim inspected the test of a solid-fuel engine for Hwasong-20, which has a longer range that its predecessors. By extending the range of its intercontinental ballistic missiles, North Korea intends to press America to negotiate on its terms.
North Korea’s Approaches on Arms Reduction
North Korea advanced pragmatic and gradual arms reduction proposals to the United States when it sought to improve bilateral relations under conditions of great power rapprochement. North Korea’s arms reduction proposals in the mid-1980s exemplified Pyongyang’s pragmatic approach. In July 1987, through a government statement, North Korea proposed a three-phased arms reduction to South Korea, aiming to downsize both militaries to 100,000 personnel by 1991. With this proposal, Pyongyang revealed an incremental approach to the longstanding issue of withdrawing U.S. forces from Korea, arguing that U.S. troops should be withdrawn in accordance with mutual reduction by both Koreas. On Nov. 8, 1988, North Korea repeated the same plan in a more detailed manner, declaring that U.S. forces also should be withdrawn in three years by the end of 1991 — starting from the removal of nuclear weapons in 1989 to the withdrawal of the U.S. ground forces in 1990 and concluding with the withdrawal of U.S. naval and air forces from South Korea.
Moreover, on May 31, 1990, North Korea proposed arms control and disarmament to achieve the gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces in Korea and phased closure of U.S. military bases without raising the U.S. Forces Korea issue directly. This phrasing of a “joint effort” of the South and North reflected Pyongyang’s pragmatic stance, in that it did not frame the withdrawal of American troops as a precondition of inter-Korean military dialogue, as it did in earlier proposals.
Even though the withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea was unacceptable to the United States and South Korea during the Cold War, the shift from the demand of an immediate pullout to advocating a gradual reduction represented a strategic adjustment of North Korea’s security policy toward the U.S.-South Korean alliance. Against the backdrop of U.S.-Soviet reconciliation at the Reykjavik Summit, this shift indicated that North Korea was testing the possibility of coexistence with the U.S.-South Korean alliance.
On the other hand, North Korea continued to press radical and large-scale demands through unilateral proposals to the United States when Pyongyang primarily pursued the support of allied countries. North Korea’s Cold War behavior illustrates this pattern. Immediately after the Korean War armistice signing, North Korea urged the United States and China to withdraw their forces from the Korean Peninsula simultaneously. As Chinese troops completed their withdrawal by the end of 1958, North Korea criticized the United States for failing to do the same, and continued to demand the immediate and unconditional removal of U.S. forces in Korea. Since the Soviet Union pursued peaceful coexistence with Washington in the late 1950s, Pyongyang’s peace offensive also coincided with Soviet foreign policy and consequent international communist movements around the world.
At the same time, North Korea proposed unilateral concessions by the United States to exploit U.S. domestic political change in Washington. Beyond its traditional demand for the instant and unconditional withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea, North Korea also brought the issue of U.S. nuclear weapons in South Korea to the forefront of its propaganda beginning in 1976. In September that year, North Korea’s official newspaper again argued that the United States should remove all nuclear weapons from the South. This demand was triggered by the initiation of the Team Spirit military exercise that year and heightened tension after the Axe Murder Incident. Pyongyang escalated its call for the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons the following year, aiming to exploit U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s campaign pledge to reduce the U.S. military presence in South Korea and nuclear weapons there. At the Joint Conference of All Political Parties and Social Organizations on Jan. 25, 1977, just five days after Carter’s inauguration, North Korean participants insisted that the United States withdraw all its lethal weapons from the Peninsula to reduce the danger of nuclear war in the region.
Anticipating North Korea’s Future Negotiation Strategy
Although Pyongyang has cautiously signaled interest in dialogue with the United States, its main pillar in foreign affairs has been alliance diplomacy since the Eighth Party Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea in January 2021. At the Party Congress, Kim concluded that the external environment required a tough strategy against hostile countries while expanding ties with socialist countries and cooperation with revolutionary and progressive parties. He defined this as his “power for power, goodwill for goodwill” strategy. This approach repeated Pyongyang’s worldview that international affairs are a power struggle between progressive forces and imperialists. The strategy had remained irrelevant in the globalization era. However, the Russo-Ukraine War provided North Korea with an opportunity to revive its military alliance with Moscow. After a September 2023 summit, cooperation expanded from arms trade to the dispatch of North Korean troops. Kim also joined Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing for China’s military parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, using the occasion to secure economic cooperation with Beijing, and expressing a desire to expand trade with China at the summit with Xi.
Alongside alliance diplomacy, North Korea pays close attention to U.S. domestic politics. With Trump’s return, the forthcoming U.S. National Defense Strategy is expected to prioritize homeland security, implying optimization of overseas deployments regardless of region. Recalling how it exploited Carter’s campaign pledges, Pyongyang may press the second Trump administration to shift primary defense responsibility to allies, including South Korea.
Like during the Cold War, North Korea is likely to combine appeals to allies with efforts to exploit domestic political shifts in Washington. It may propose sweeping and radical arms reduction measures, portraying U.S. rejection as proof of hostile intent. For example, in July 2016, Pyongyang presented five preconditions for denuclearization of talks: disclosure of U.S. nuclear weapons in South Korea (though Washington declared their withdrawal in September 1991, and Seoul confirmed their nonexistence three months later), removal of U.S. nuclear bases, cessation of strategic asset deployments, provision of negative security assurances, and declaring withdrawal of U.S. military forces from South Korea. Pyongyang may once again invoke these conditions in future talks as conditions to stop its nuclear weapon development.
If Washington accepts, North Korea may return to negotiations, though outcomes would be limited to a freeze of fissile material production and restrictions on intercontinental ballistic missile range. Still, radical proposals of this sort could strain the U.S.-South Korean alliance and undermine trilateral security cooperation with Japan.
How to Deal with North Korea’s Radical Approach
The United States might perceive that the North Korean request to remove nonexistent nuclear U.S. weapons from South Korea and to withdraw U.S. forces — essential for the defense of South Korea and Japan — as superficially attractive. Trump mentioned the idea of “complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea” during his first presidency, but refrained from pushing the idea, reserving it as “a second-term priority.” Some experts have worried that the second Trump administration would try to make a deal with North Korea at the expense of U.S. forces in Korea. In 2025, Washington was reviewing its overseas force posture with a focus on deterring China, without excluding the possibility of reducing U.S. forces in Korea.
However, the United States should realize that accepting North Korea’s radical and large-scale proposal would cost more than it would yield. Above all, it would undermine irreplaceable alliance cooperation with South Korea. Such cooperation is critical to rebuilding the U.S. naval shipbuilding industry and closing the shipbuilding capacity gap with China. A significant reduction of U.S. forces in Korea would also erode Japan’s confidence in U.S. security commitments in the Indo-Pacific region. In return, Washington could expect at best only a temporary suspension — neither irreversible nor complete — of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
Therefore, Washington should take proactive measures to prevent such demands from alienating its Asian allies. The key to coping with the North Korean suggestion will be close consultation by the United States with Seoul and Tokyo to jointly assess and respond to it.
In particular, accepting the North Korean demand for negative security assurances could undermine extended deterrence for South Korea and Japan. If Washington pledges not to use nuclear weapons against North Korea, it would effectively remove nuclear weapons from the toolkit of U.S. extended deterrence, thereby weakening the expected cost of North Korea’s nuclear use.
When North Korea approaches negotiation with the United States in a confrontational manner, as it is currently doing, reinforcing deterrence and allied cooperation is more efficient than yielding to Pyongyang’s exaggerated disarmament demands. For example, in the case of U.S. homeland security, establishing an integrated system of extended deterrence between Washington and Seoul will be essential to enable a rapid response to North Korea’s nuclear threats. Washington and Seoul can cooperate to detect North Korea’s increasing number of mobile missile launchers and the locations of the systems, and deepen trilateral cooperation with Japan to trace North Korea’s long-range missiles collaboratively. In addition, the three allies will be able to support one another in enhancing missile defense capabilities.
During the Cold War, the United States prioritized defending its alliance with South Korea, treating North Korea’s radical and sweeping disarmament proposals as deceptions preceding further provocations. In the late 1950s, the U.S. government chose to deploy tactical nuclear warheads to the Korean Peninsula rather than responding to North Korea’s demand to withdraw U.S. forces immediately. The Carter administration in the 1970s also retracted the promise to pull out American troops from Korea in response to criticism in Congress and concerns over destabilization of the Northeast Asian security landscape. The Cold War experience suggests that the current U.S. government will likewise need to prioritize security imperatives.
To induce North Korea to adopt a more pragmatic and constructive negotiating posture, it is necessary to highlight Pyongyang’s need to improve relations with Washington. For instance, when the Russo-Ukrainian War draws to a close, Moscow could persuade North Korea to support U.S.-Russian negotiations. In line with the logic of North Korean diplomacy, such support would be interpreted domestically as making improved relations with the United States a legitimate foreign policy goal.
Nevertheless, North Korea may cling to its dogmatic and radical demands, leading to another failure of the U.S.-North Korean denuclearization talks. What follows will largely depend on China’s reaction to Pyongyang’s isolation. If Beijing pursues denuclearization of North Korea on the basis of its long history dialogue with Washington, the trajectory of the Korean Peninsula will differ significantly from a scenario in which China instead restores its traditional ties with North Korea to preserve its buffer zone. Xi stated that the Chinese Communist Party and government attached “great importance to the traditional friendship between China and the [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea].” Should this stance continue while Russo-North Korean ties weaken, cooperation between Beijing and Pyongyang will likely experience a resurgence. In this scenario, North Korea could persist in its nuclear weapon development policy with diplomatic and economic support from China. To prevent unchecked proliferation by Pyongyang, Washington and Seoul must also address the China factor.
Peace and Stability?
North Korea’s radical disarmament proposals remain unrealistic, but they can still challenge allied unity and deterrence. The United States and South Korea must reinforce extended deterrence, coordinate closely with Japan, and carefully manage the China factor to guide Pyongyang toward pragmatic engagement and prevent further destabilization in Northeast Asia.
However, dialogue with North Korea remains essential to manage nuclear risks and to prevent miscalculation that could escalate into conflict. While North Korea has emphasized strategic balance or a balance of power with the U.S.-Republic of Korea alliance since the Eighth Party Congress, this strategic balance inherently carries the risk of nuclear escalation, as North Korea exploits such opportunities as a tool of deterrence. Notably, North Korea’s nuclear forces law outlines five conditions for nuclear use. To stabilize this precarious balance until the prospect of denuclearization becomes feasible, sustained dialogue and engagement with Pyongyang are necessary to reduce the risks of nuclear escalation.
Choong-Koo Lee, Ph.D., is a research fellow at the Korean Institute for Defense Analyses. His research has covered North Korea, U.S.-Chinese relations, and the impact of emerging technologies on security and defense. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official positions of the Korean Institute for Defense Analyses or the Ministry of National Defense of the Republic of Korea.
Image: Midjourney
