Experts warn sidelining denuclearization could weaken Seoul's leverage

U.S. President Donald Trump’s refusal to say whether denuclearization remains the goal of renewed talks with North Korea has fueled speculation that Washington could set the issue aside in order to bring Pyongyang back to the negotiating table.

Experts warn that the focus should not be simply on whether U.S.-North Korea talks resume, but on what the talks are intended to achieve.

A deal centered on managing North Korea’s nuclear threat rather than ultimately eliminating it could benefit Washington and Pyongyang while leaving Seoul with less leverage, they say.

Rep. Yu Yong-weon of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) said that while the chances of North Korea actually moving toward denuclearization may be slim, signaling that the goal itself is being abandoned or deprioritized could create problems.

“Giving the impression that we are abandoning or backing away from the goal of denuclearization could send a very wrong message to North Korea,” Yu, a member of the National Assembly’s National Defense Committee, told The Korea Times.

“It could be seen as legitimizing North Korea’s continued advancement of its nuclear and missile programs.”

Yu said there could be room for tactical flexibility, including a phased approach that begins with a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests. But he warned against explicitly abandoning or decentering denuclearization.

“There can be various tactical approaches,” he said. “But abandoning the goal itself, or putting it much lower on the list of priorities, is not desirable.”

Cha Du-hyeogn, vice president of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said that if Washington accepts North Korea’s nuclear capabilities as a reality and shifts toward threat management, then the logical response would be to maintain or strengthen deterrence against those capabilities.

That could mean reinforcing extended deterrence and adapting combined military exercises to better respond to North Korea’s nuclear threat. Scaling back the exercises at the same time, he said, creates a “logical contradiction.”

But he cautioned against reading too much into Trump’s latest remarks, saying the U.S. president has not explicitly backed away from Washington’s existing position on denuclearization.

“Nothing in Trump’s remarks so far represents a sudden retreat from his previous position,” Cha said, adding that Trump’s approach appears geared more toward managing the North Korean threat than reaching a major new agreement.

Sean King, an Asia scholar and senior vice president at New York-based consultancy Park Strategies, also warned that scaling back the exercises without substantive concessions from Pyongyang could work in Kim’s favor.

“Kim Jong-un — and [Chinese President] Xi Jinping for that matter — now have further evidence of how much they can separate Trump from traditional U.S. allies with flattery and very little substance in return,” King said.

More fundamentally, Cha questioned what Seoul would gain from an agreement that does not require Pyongyang to move toward denuclearization.

North Korea could retain its nuclear arsenal while potentially gaining sanctions relief and preserving its strategic advantage over Seoul. Washington, meanwhile, could claim success if it reduces the threat North Korea poses to the U.S. mainland. But South Korea has little negotiating power to shape such an agreement, Cha said.

“How can we serve as a 'pacemaker' when we have no leverage over North Korea?” he asked, referring to Seoul’s stated ambition to facilitate renewed U.S.-North Korea diplomacy.

Moon Seong-mook, director of the Unification Strategy Center at the Korea Research Institute for National Strategy, emphasized the need to distinguish between dropping denuclearization as a precondition for talks and abandoning it as a long-term objective.

“We ultimately have to achieve North Korea’s denuclearization. We cannot give up that goal,” Moon said. He added that talks could begin without preconditions, but warned against accepting Pyongyang’s demand to negotiate as a nuclear-armed state.

Moon pointed to the aftermath of the 2018 Singapore summit as a cautionary example. Trump suspended major South Korea-U.S. military exercises after meeting Kim, but the North Korean nuclear issue saw no meaningful breakthroughs.

“The combined exercises were suspended, but there was no progress at all on the North Korean nuclear issue,” Moon said. “What we feared most ended up becoming reality.”

He said another Trump-Kim meeting would not necessarily be a bad development, but warned against an outcome in which the nuclear issue remains unresolved while the alliance is weakened.