Korea needs statecraft, not stagecraft

South Korea’s security stands at its most perilous juncture since the 1953 armistice. The prospect of a U.S. troop withdrawal is no longer a distant hypothetical, but a tangible threat. North Korea, emboldened by its nuclear arsenal, no longer even acknowledges Seoul as a legitimate interlocutor.

Meanwhile, the broader strategic environment is deteriorating. As the U.S.-China rivalry sharpens across the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, the Korean Peninsula has become more unstable than at any point in recent memory.

Against this backdrop, the upcoming U.S.-South Korea summit in Washington on Monday may prove to be a decisive moment for the nation’s survival. What South Korea’s president must secure is not photo opportunities or lofty rhetoric. There are only two guarantees that matter: an unequivocal assurance that U.S. forces will remain on the peninsula and a credible reaffirmation of America’s nuclear umbrella. Economic investments and trade concessions are secondary — meaningful only if they serve as tools to obtain these core security commitments. Yet ominous signals suggest that events are moving in the opposite direction.

The Donald Trump administration has already entered the stage of considering partial withdrawals. A potential reduction of the roughly 4,500-strong Stryker Brigade Combat Team has been floated — not as a mere tactical adjustment, but as a possible prelude to a broader drawdown. Once the process begins, a prevalent anxiety in Seoul is that momentum could make further withdrawals simply a matter of time. Within the United States, the push for greater burden-sharing and talk of “modernizing” or “restructuring” the U.S. military presence are gaining traction, making the threat more than symbolic.

Economic pressure is compounding the insecurity. On July 30, Seoul and Washington agreed to a 15 percent tariff arrangement, only for the U.S. to announce weeks later a new 50 percent levy on steel and aluminum derivatives — another blow to Korean industries. With both security and economic stability under siege, the task before Korea’s leadership at the summit should be glaringly obvious.

Yet the Lee Jae Myung administration projects the opposite. Rather than confronting security questions head-on, it seems intent on treating the summit as an occasion to offer economic gifts and investment promises designed to please Trump. Just days ago, Foreign Minister Cho Hyun told lawmakers that nothing had been decided regarding U.S. troop levels or joint responses to a Taiwan contingency — an admission that substantive issues may once again be deferred.

More troubling is the government’s apparent willingness to substitute vague, symbolic statements for concrete commitments, relegating the hard questions to follow-up meetings between ministers or working-level officials. This is diplomacy as “stagecraft,” not statecraft — placing optics above the nation’s defense.

Even more alarming are reports that the joint statement may include language endorsing the 2018 Singapore Declaration between Washington and Pyongyang. If true, such an insertion would represent a baffling misstep at a moment when Korea’s security circumstances have fundamentally shifted.

Today’s North Korea is not the North Korea of Singapore in 2018. Back then, Pyongyang was still maneuvering to exchange partial denuclearization gestures for sanctions relief, its weapons program incomplete and its economy fragile under international pressure. Today, after repeated intercontinental ballistic missile tests and years of weapons development, the regime regards its deterrent as essentially complete. Its confidence is not bluster but grounded in military reality.

The war in Ukraine has further transformed North Korea’s prospects. By dispatching troops and providing arms to Russia, Pyongyang has opened new channels to obtain hard currency and resources. Through coal exports, labor dispatches and arms sales, it now sustains its economy with less need to extract concessions from Seoul. This shift explains why Kim Yo-jong, Kim Jong-un's influential sister, now mocks South Korea’s overtures with open scorn. Her barbs are not mere rhetoric, but a reflection of genuine confidence that the South is no longer indispensable, and that Pyongyang’s real game lies in direct negotiations with Washington.

The contrast with Ukraine should be sobering. Kyiv is being forced into painful choices as it faces pressure to negotiate under dire conditions, its sovereignty and security compromised by overwhelming force. Thoughtful South Koreans cannot look at Ukraine’s agony and assume that the Korean Peninsula is immune from a similar fate. Yet the current administration behaves as if it inhabits a different planet, insulated from the harsh realities that confront nations left to fend for themselves.

President Lee seems to hold a vague conviction that South Korea is fundamentally different from Ukraine, but he has never offered a clear explanation to his own citizens as to why that is the case. He has not articulated what structural advantages — if any — shield South Korea from the kind of vulnerability Ukraine now endures. Instead, he relies on abstract calls for “peace,” leaving the public with slogans rather than a sober assessment of the nation’s risks and defenses. This silence is telling: It suggests either that the government has no coherent rationale, or that it prefers to avoid acknowledging the stark possibility that Korea could, in fact, face a similar predicament.

Nevertheless, Lee’s inner circle remains trapped in the illusion of “dialogue” with Pyongyang. Even as North Korea openly sidelines Seoul and seeks only bilateral arms-control discussions with Washington, the government clings to the outdated framework of endorsing the Singapore Declaration. This detachment from reality not only betrays poor judgment; it raises doubts about the very qualifications of those charged with safeguarding the nation’s security.

The South Korea-U.S. summit cannot be reduced to theater. For South Korea, the stakes are existential. The president must ensure that there will be no withdrawal of U.S. forces — partial or complete — and that the nuclear umbrella will remain intact. If these assurances are won, the summit will be a success. If they are absent, no amount of investment pledges or choreographed optics can disguise the void at the core of Korea’s defense.

Should the government continue to chase peace slogans or short-term political survival, history will record this meeting as the moment when South Korea traded its security for a fleeting photograph.

Park Jung-won (park_jungwon@hotmail.com), Ph.D. in law from the London School of Economics (LSE), is a professor of international law at Dankook University.