Key Takeaways:

- President Lee’s E.N.D. policy repackages familiar progressive sequencing—exchange, normalization, then denuclearization—but does little to reflect how fundamentally North Korea’s posture has changed since 2019. 

- Pyongyang no longer accepts denuclearization as a negotiating horizon and has redefined inter-Korean relations in ways that old formulas and new slogans cannot reverse. 

- As Lee encourages Trump’s “peacemaker” instincts, Seoul’s most urgent task is not rebranding policy but shaping U.S.–ROK alignment ahead of any U.S.–DPRK talks, lest peace be negotiated on terms that marginalize South Korea’s core interests.

If there’s one thing Korean politics does well, it’s catchy phrases and loaded acronyms. President Lee Jae Myung’s encouragement of US President Donald Trump to be the “peacemaker” on the Korean Peninsula and offering to be the “pacemaker” to the process was a clever turn of phrase, appealing to Trump’s self-perceptions while trying to preserve a place for South Korea in any potential US-North Korea interactions.

Lee’s later announcement of his E.N.D. policy toward North Korea was a convenient sound bite to describe his “Exchange, Normalization and Denuclearization” roadmap. But there is little new to the approach from what previous progressive administrations have pursued. While this sequencing might have worked in the past to varying degrees of success, the geopolitical conditions have fundamentally changed since the last round of inter-Korean and US-North Korea talks ended. Recycling this old formula is unlikely to move the needle with Pyongyang and is more likely to end with Seoul getting sidelined – or side swiped – if Trump and Kim Jong Un resume talks in the future.

Lee seems to be already recalibrating, especially retooling how denuclearization fits into the equation, to account for this reality. However, renaming the policy will only go so far. Given how North Korea’s vision of peace on the Korean Peninsula appears to be shaping up, more work needs to be done to build mutual understanding within the US-ROK alliance to help shape the agenda of any future US-DPRK talks.

The New Operating Environment

The END initiative is premised on the idea that sequencing is the key to success. Rather than the previous Yoon Seok-yul administration’s assertion that North Korea’s denuclearization could lead to normalized relations and robust benefits, Lee has laid out a path where gradual improvement of relations is possible in the near term, through exchange and peacebuilding, creating the conditions where denuclearization is possible in the long term.

This approach, however, is far from new. Past progressive administrations followed this familiar pattern, starting with exchanges such as family reunions and economic cooperation while working to lower the risks of war and build the foundations of a sustainable peace regime. Denuclearization would be part of that peace regime, with the prospects of unification sometimes more or less prominent as the long-term measure of success.

While this sequencing makes sense and was once endorsed by North Korea, it requires having a willing partner in Pyongyang and international cooperation to achieve. In 2018, Kim Jong Un was, in fact, willing to negotiate around his nuclear weapons program to accommodate broader security and economic goals. Moon Jae-in also found Trump to be an unexpected partner, breaking the historic refusal of a sitting US president to engage a North Korean leader directly to try to leapfrog negotiations forward.  

That combination of personalities, with general support for the negotiation process from China and Russia as well, created a unique window of opportunity to engineer a breakthrough in relations. But even under those conditions, the US and North Korea couldn’t agree on what a mutually acceptable first step should be and the process ended almost as abruptly as it started. At the same time, inter-Korean exchange cooperation were severely hampered by sanctions, unable to move forward with the commitments made in the Panmunjom Declaration as well. Moreover, there seemed little support from the US, despite its improving relations with Pyongyang, or the international community to give Seoul space to maneuver within the sanctions regime without first securing concrete actions on North Korean denuclearization.

One lesson Kim Jong Un appears to have learned from that experience is that there is no longer an inter-Korean agenda that can be pursued independent from North Korea’s relations with the US or international community – relationships that are largely contingent on the nuclear issue. Kim had urged Moon multiple times in 2018 and 2019 not to let external actors interfere in inter-Korean affairs, but Moon’s hands were tied without sanctions exemptions and the goodwill eventually led to disappointment and North Korean resentment.

Since 2019, North Korea has severed ties with the South, denounced a shared goal of peaceful unification, disbanded institutions that managed North-South relations, denied shared kinship still exists, and codified into law South Korea as a separate and hostile state. This is not just a policy shift, but a fundamentally new stance on peninsular relations – one that is not going to be reversed by an old approach dressed up in a new catchphrase.

Furthermore, even in potential dealings with the United States, North Korea has made clear that any negotiation process contingent on denuclearization – whether at the beginning or the end – will be rejected. While Kim Jong Un has said there is a reason for two states with nuclear weapons not to have confrontational relations, he appears to be in no rush to resume talks with Trump, and especially not about his nuclear weapons program. This raises important questions about what future talks between the US and DPRK would focus on. This should be especially concerning to Seoul, as they encourage Trump to follow his so-called peacemaking instincts with Kim Jong Un.

What Next?

Lee has shown a willingness to modify the language of his E.N.D. policy away from the term denuclearization, which is politically charged and has historically implied the unilateral disarmament of the North, to a more neutral term of “nuclear-free Korean Peninsula” to accommodate a potential diplomatic opening. This is not a new term in inter-Korean relations, as it was used in the Panmunjom Declaration as well, as the end goal of denuclearization.

This recalibration of language might have been useful under past conditions, but it is unlikely to be particularly compelling in the present. Not only is North Korea seemingly uninterested in negotiating about its nuclear program, but the term seems disconnected to South Korea’s own actions these days. Since 2018, the US and South Korea have deepened alliance cooperation on nuclear planning and conventional nuclear integration, as delineated in the Washington Declaration, to the extent it is touted as a “nuclear alliance” with growing discussion of further measures such as nuclear sharing. More recently, South Korea’s push for nuclear latency—including nuclear powered submarines, and enrichment and reprocessing rights—appears to be making slow progress. These actions seem at odds with a policy what would be expected from a country working toward a “nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.”

More importantly, Lee’s encouragement of Trump to be the “peacemaker” for the Korean Peninsula creates a real possibility that future US-DPRK talks will focus on defining that peace. North Korea is undoubtedly learning from current Russia-Ukraine peace negotiations and planning accordingly. Should Kim resume talks with Trump, he is liable to come to the table with his own plan, one that naturally caters to North Korean interests and presents a very different vision of peace on the Korean Peninsula. This is unlikely to be the symbolic “end of war” declaration request from past negotiations but will probably push for something more substantial that endorses the permanent division of the Korean Peninsula, permanent sovereignty, North Korean-defined borders, and potentially even the dissolution of legacies of the Korean War such as the DMZ. This kind of an agenda will fundamentally call into question the legitimacy of South Korea’s territorial claims at the very least and could even impact how the US or international community views South Korea’s continued push for unification.  

Therefore, changing the name of the policy may be useful for facilitating potential diplomatic opportunities, if the final formulation conforms with broader policy aims and actions. But the more urgent task for the Lee administration seems to be building a deeper mutual understanding within the US-ROK alliance ahead of any US-DPRK talks, establishing some parameters of what should (and shouldn’t) be negotiable, and helping shape what Trump’s “peacemaker” vision for the Korean Peninsula should be.