Now that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has a Russian dance partner that actually delivers for him, will U.S. President-elect Donald Trump be able to rekindle the bromance between Washington and Pyongyang that flamed out in Hanoi in 2019?
Among the many questions surrounding the future foreign policy of a second Trump term—from the fate of NATO and Ukraine and Gaza to the inevitable global trade wars—this one stands out. Will Trump again send “love letters” to Kim Jong Un in the hopes of sealing a grand bargain that could put U.S.-North Korean relations on a different footing—and if so, what possible bargain is that? Or, if conditions have changed so much in the past five years that fresh summitry is off the table, what happens to the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia?
“The biggest difference on the North Korean side is that Kim has the relationship with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin that he has long wanted with China,” said Victor Cha, the Korea chair at the Center for International and Strategic Studies. “That was not the case before, when Kim put all their eggs in the summit basket and that was a huge failure.”
Kim’s North Korea has also grown in capacity, not just confidence, with new backers, making it even harder for any U.S. administration to offer minimal inducements to coax concessions out of Pyongyang.
“There is so much that has changed in the past five years, we don’t just pick up where we left off. If any Trump administration people think they can just reoffer what they offered at Hanoi, their calculus is wrong,” said Jenny Town, the director of the North Korea program at the Stimson Center. “North Korea has made significant advances in developing weapons of mass destruction, and geopolitical trends are working in their favor.”
What is clear is that the desperate Kim who met with Trump years ago is not the confident, well-supported Kim of today. For more than two years, North Korea has provided Russia with much-needed munitions to wage its war in Ukraine; for the last month, it has thrown elite troops into the mix. The mutual defense pact between Russia and North Korea, announced in June, has been affirmed and reaffirmed, and Kim is getting food, money, oil, and almost certainly advanced military technology out of the deal. The Kim that sought breadcrumbs, carrots, and sanctions relief from the West when he met with Trump the last time is not the Kim of today.
But Kim is also different in another way: The decades of North Korean willingness to trade nuclear weapons for U.S. recognition, normalization, and sanctions relief are a thing of the past. What had been, since at least 1990, the starting point for U.S.-North Korean relations has been buried under the avalanche of rancor since 2019, belligerent words from Kim since 2022, and certainly dusted under the shifting fortifications and wrecked rails of the demilitarized zone since.
“The North Korean position is clear. If they reengage, it will be on the premise of dropping denuclearization from the agenda,” said Scott Snyder, the president and CEO of the Korean Economic Institute of America (KEI).
But there are also a few things that are clear, or seem to be, about Trump. He believes he has a good personal relationship with Kim. He likes making deals, likes to think he ends wars, and has never been a fan of underwriting South Korea’s security by garrisoning some 28,500 U.S. troops there on the United States’ dime.
So the prospects of yet another Trump-Kim summit are remote, but not impossible.
“On the Trump side, what is different is that he knows now how government works, and he has said that he wants to end all the wars. I think that also means the Korean War, in a way that he can get U.S. troops out of the Korean Peninsula,” said Cha.
So talks could happen, but to what end? Kim went to Singapore, and then to Hanoi, eager to get relief and, in a roundabout way, security for his regime. He now has both to an extent, courtesy of Moscow. Russia has run interference on efforts by the United Nations to enforce sanctions on Pyongyang and is bankrolling and backstocking North Korea, all in exchange for a few million shells and a few thousand souls. He is part, if not entirely parcel, of a growing bloc of anti-Western countries that are actively seeking to create an alternative to the U.S.-led order, with ways to evade the long arm of U.S. sanctions being the mortar of the expanding BRICS group.
The United States under Trump could offer tacit recognition of North Korea’s status as a de facto nuclear power. Pyongyang’s 50-plus nuclear warheads, plus the rockets to deliver them, already exist. What hasn’t existed until now is a willingness in Washington to accept that fact. Trump might be willing to; less clear is whether those around him, who do prioritize U.S. security interests in Asia, will do the same, let alone the bulk of the U.S. security establishment that remains committed to nuclear nonproliferation.
“In terms of the U.S. government’s default position, there is a lot of resistance” to acknowledging North Korean nuclear proliferation, Snyder said.
But Trump could offer a lesser olive branch to rekindle the relationship. Kim has railed against U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises for years only slightly less vehemently than Trump has. Those could be the first to go. U.S. troops could follow. Or Trump could accept Kim’s transformation of the demilitarized zone—the no-man’s land between North and South Korea that marks the armistice of the last war but could spark the next—as the cost of doing business.
“I think what could happen is that Trump makes all the right noises [about the U.S. alliance with South Korea] but doesn’t want to pay for any military exercises. That could be one of the first things to watch for,” Cha said.
One of the big questions is what effect Trump’s other big promised diplomatic overture—ending Russia’s war in Ukraine—would have on the situation in Northeast Asia. For some observers, the recently deepened ties between Russia and North Korea are fruit of that Russian dependence on North Korean arms, and an end to the war could spell an end of the affair.
“The fuel that is going to drive that relationship is the scope of exchange based on relative needs on either side,” Snyder said. “I just think the likelihood is the relationship will be less likely to thrive if the need and opportunity are diminished.”
For others, the links between North Korea and Russia were not so much forged in the front lines of Kursk as marketed there. The shared interests between North Korea and Russia go beyond military expediency and encompass a vision of a new world, with alternatives to the dollar, answers to U.S. hegemony, and a role for the also-rans. The terms of this year’s mutual defense pact between the two countries do not reek of a marriage of convenience.
“I wouldn’t overestimate how much of the relationship is only about the war [in Ukraine],” Town said. “Russia has made a very common cause with North Korea beyond the war: There is the resistance, the question of sanctions, the creation of a multipolar system, even all the alternative payments platforms, and North Korea is a part of that.”
So Kim’s second big shift, toward Putin, may survive the end of the war in Ukraine, after his first big pivot—the unforgiving embrace of nuclear weapons. But there is a big third shift in Kim’s posture that affects what Trump can do, what the United States should do, and what Seoul must do. And that is Kim’s newfound conviction that the unification of the Korean Peninsula, peaceful or otherwise, is now off the table.
Kim has made clear that South Korea is a “hostile state.” He no longer speaks of peaceful coexistence, but hostile coexistence. His speeches since 2022 leave open the door to nuclear war against his southern neighbor—for neighbor it now is, and no longer a wayward and richer cousin. What has been a temporary and tetchy truce line until now could turn into a tripwire.
“They are trying to solidify a permanent two-state solution to the Peninsula,” said Town, who noted that all of Kim’s moves in the past couple years, from aggressive speeches to aggressive actions in the demilitarized zone “are leading up to North Korea basically saying, ‘This is a border now, not a buffer zone.’”
This doesn’t mean that an emboldened and bolstered Kim will start a war on the Korean Peninsula, though whatever happens now will need to include Russia in its calculus. What it does mean is that Kim has given up any hope of reunification and is instead battening down the hatches with a little help from his friends. South Korea, which is even more gifted at pop music than the Kim family is at golf, has a cultural, economic, military power that dwarfs North Korea, and the gap is only widening.
For much of the world, having two sovereign states on the Korean Peninsula might not be news. But for South Korea, such a situation, with such a constellation against it—both from foes but perhaps also from friends—raises serious questions about the reliability of its security umbrella. For years, lawmakers in South Korea have talked about getting their own nuclear deterrent.
Some 74 years ago, a U.S. secretary of state left South Korea out of that U.S. security perimeter, almost by oversight. Seoul is not anxious for a sequel. Trump has shown that he can end wars, though the endgames have been messy. Seoul is watching to see if, and how, their long war might end—and what it might mean for them.
“You could end up in a situation where there is a so-called ‘peace deal,’ they end the [Korean War], and both sides are nuclear, especially if Trump pulls out U.S. troops,” Cha said. “You could have a bizarre situation.”
The post Could Trump Rekindle Diplomacy With North Korea? appeared first on Foreign Policy.
