Despite an invitation to dialogue extended by the president of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), Lee Jae Myung, to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), the long-standing conflict on the Korean Peninsula does not appear any closer to resolution. So far, Lee’s overtures have received a frosty response from North Korea, which sees little incentive for inter-Korean reconciliation in the absence of engagement with the United States.
Although both US President Donald J. Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have indicated openness to resuming engagement over the past year, the US objective of denuclearization is deeply at odds with North Korea’s heavy reliance on nuclear deterrence. Hopes for renewed diplomacy remain fragile against the backdrop of the USA’s inconsistent approach the last time Kim engaged with Trump, when a mutual commitment to confidence building in 2018 was followed by the latter’s one-sided denuclearization demands in 2019, spoiling North Korea’s appetite for compromise.Trump’s policy towards Iran—which the USA has attacked twice during nuclear negotiations, with the goals suddenly shifting from non-proliferation to regime change—has likely further reinforced North Korea’s perceived need to hold on to nuclear weapons to ensure its survival.
Meanwhile, persistent tensions on the Korean peninsula, the presence of large-scale military forces and nuclear weapons, and doubts about US commitments to its allies have created a volatile situation that risks spiralling out of control. There is an urgent need for preventive measures. A broader multilateral dialogue on regional stability in North East Asia could offer an alternative—and potentially more sustainable—framework for advancing inter-Korean reconciliation and risk reduction, notably by helping to decouple these much-needed efforts from the divisive issue of denuclearization.
The checkered history of diplomatic engagement
Since the early 1990s, diplomatic efforts on the Korean peninsula have focused primarily on bilateral channels between North Korea and South Korea and between North Korea and the USA. Even when pursued separately, these diplomatic tracks are closely linked. Inter-Korean reconciliation efforts have helped to create a more favourable political environment for North Korean–US nuclear diplomacy, while the latter has helped to reduce tensions between the two Koreas. Conversely, sustaining inter-Korean diplomacy without simultaneous North Korean–US engagement has proved difficult. With the diplomatic impasse between North Korea and the USA more entrenched than ever, the prospects of meaningful progress in inter‑Korean reconciliation appear poor.
Initially, the issue of denuclearization in relation to North Korea meant ensuring its compliance with non-proliferation obligations. Even though North Korea had in 1985 acceded to the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), nuclear activities continued to raise compliance concerns. The 1994 Agreed Framework between the USA and North Korea marked significant progress in addressing these concerns. Under the agreement, North Korea froze its plutonium production in exchange for energy assistance and other benefits. After eight years of implementation, the Agreed Framework was abandoned in 2002 by the US administration of President George W. Bush.
The USA’s March 2003 invasion of Iraq—a country Bush had characterized as part of the ‘axis of evil’, alongside Iran and North Korea—raised the prospect of similar forced regime change in North Korea. This contributed to North Korea’s decision to withdraw from the NPT in January 2003.
From that point onwards, international efforts shifted from non-proliferation to the far more elusive goal of nuclear disarmament—that is, dismantling North Korea’s nuclear programme and its expanding nuclear arsenal. Since its first nuclear test in 2006, North Korea has been subject to United Nations sanctions aimed at pressuring the country to rejoin the NPT and abandon its nuclear weapons and related programmes ‘in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner’. While signalling international condemnation and imposing heavy economic costs, this coercive approach has failed to bring North Korea any closer to nuclear disarmament.
Instead, North Korea has expanded nuclear warhead production and the development of associated delivery vehicles over the past two decades. Between the collapse of the Agreed Framework in 2002 and 2018, its only nuclear-related concession was a short-lived suspension of plutonium production in 2007–08 in return for sanctions relief and fuel deliveries. This took place during the China-led Six-Party Talks, which sought the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula while also establishing working groups on issues such as regional security, normalization of political relations and economic cooperation. These talks collapsed in 2009 amid confrontational dynamics around North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests and the resulting UN sanctions.
Tensions around North Korea’s nuclear programme—which peaked in 2017 with mutual nuclear threats by Kim and Trump—gave way to nuclear diplomacy in 2018, facilitated by inter-Korean engagement under South Korean President Moon Jae-in. At the June 2018 Singapore Summit, Kim and Trump committed to denuclearization through a gradual confidence-building approach. Practical steps taken by North Korea included halting nuclear and missile tests, shutting down the 5 MWe Yongbyon reactor and dismantling the Punggye-ri test site, while the USA suspended major joint military exercises with South Korea.
However, momentum was lost at the February 2019 Hanoi Summit, when the USA suddenly demanded North Korea’s full denuclearization as a precondition for sanctions relief. Although the Trump administration later shifted to a more limited objective in working-level talks—freezing North Korea’s plutonium and enriched uranium production—these broke down in October 2019. Apart from the souring of bilateral relations post-Hanoi, this reflected the modest concessions that the USA was offering in return, suggesting that denuclearization remained a precondition for substantive sanctions relief. The USA had also not reciprocated North Korea’s nuclear concessions beyond suspending military exercises.
The collapse of North Korean–US diplomacy in 2019 was followed by years of non-engagement. Although the USA signalled openness to diplomacy under President Joe Biden, it prioritized deterrence and punitive measures towards North Korea, which partly explains the latter’s reluctance to engage. Closer ties with Russia have also bolstered North Korea’s energy security and economy, thus reducing its incentives to seek sanctions relief through talks with the USA.
Obstacles to North Korean–US re-engagement
During Trump’s second presidential term, he and Kim have indicated a readiness to resume bilateral engagement, with Kim saying in February 2026 that ‘we have no reason not to get along with the United States if it respects our country’s current status, as defined in the North Korean constitution, and drops its hostile policy toward North Korea’. North Korea’s updated constitution describes the country as a ‘nuclear state’. While Trump has described North Korea as a ‘sort of a nuclear power’, the stated US goal remains complete denuclearization, highlighting a persistent gap in positions.
In principle, compromise could be possible if denuclearization is treated as a long-term goal contingent on resolving the underlying political conflict between North Korea and the USA. Specifically, North Korea might accept a freeze on fissile material production, similar to what Trump sought in late 2019, in exchange for meaningful sanctions relief and confidence-building steps reducing its perceived need to expand its nuclear arsenal.
The problem is that Trump has garnered a poor reputation for compromise or keeping his word. North Korea experienced this first hand at Hanoi. Current US policy towards Iran provides another warning example; after pursuing nuclear diplomacy in a manner that resembled blackmail, Trump abandoned talks in favour of eliminating Iran’s nuclear programme—and, since 28 February, its government. This can only be expected to reinforce North Korea’s determination to retain nuclear weapons as protection against US-imposed regime change.
The inter-Korean diplomatic deadlock and its long-term implications
South Korea’s policy towards the North tends to swing from engagement to confrontation with successive progressive and conservative administrations, revealing deep ambivalence and susceptibility to negative dynamics in North Korean–US relations.
After the failure of the ‘trustpolitik’ initiative and a subsequent focus on deterrence under the administration of President Park Geun-hye (2013–17), inter-Korean reconciliation under President Moon culminated in the September 2018 Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA). The agreement included significant confidence-building measures to stabilize the border between the two countries. However, after North Korean–US talks collapsed in late 2019, the CMA gradually began to erode, particularly with North Korea’s demolition in June 2020 of the inter-Korean liaison office that had been established under the agreement.
Inter-Korean relations deteriorated further under the conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol (2022–25). After South Korea’s partial suspension of the CMA in response to North Korea launching a reconnaissance satellite in 2023, the agreement finally collapsed in June 2024 amid increasing hostility—marked by North Korea’s ‘trash ballons’ campaign, trilateral Japanese–South Korean–US military exercises and the formalization of South Korea’s pre-emptive military doctrine, which included plans to decapitate the North Korean leadership. Amid strong popular support for boosting nuclear deterrence to counter the perceived threat from the North, President Yoon even floated the idea of an indigenous nuclear arsenal.
Representing yet another pendulum shift, the progressive President Lee, who took office in June 2025, seeks to usher in a ‘new era of peaceful coexistence and shared growth’ in the Korean peninsula through ‘“exchange,” “normalization,” and “denuclearization”’. North Korea has viewed these efforts with suspicion, characterizing them as a cover for stripping North Korea of its primary means of national survival: nuclear weapons. This is despite the fact that Lee—in line with several expert assessments—has questioned the practical feasibility of denuclearization, instead viewing it as a long-term objective. Another fundamental disagreement concerns the reunification of the peninsula, on which the two countries still agreed in 2018; North Korea renounced this goal in 2024 while South Korea still considers it a central policy objective, with an emphasis on ‘peaceful co-existence’under President Lee.
While seeking to navigate away from these divisive issues, Lee has also recognized the critical role of North Korean–US engagement, stating that, ‘if the United States and North Korea talk and their relations improve, inter-Korean relations can also improve.’ However, the reverse is also true; continued deadlock in North Korean–US diplomacy risks discrediting Lee’s conciliatory approach, re-empowering South Korean hardliners and perpetuating the dangerous regional status quo. Moreover, uncertainties over US security commitments could prompt South Korea—already moving towards nuclear latency—to develop its own nuclear weapons, with Japan and Taiwan possibly following suit. This would further destabilize the region, with repercussions increasingly extending beyond the Korean Peninsula, notably affecting China.
Reviving the idea of North East Asian regional security dialogue
Rather than pinning their hopes on North Korean–US engagement, North East Asian countries could seek to prevent the further deterioration of their security environment through renewed efforts at regional security dialogue. Insofar as such a dialogue would focus on fostering stability, it could help decouple risk reduction and confidence building from denuclearization, thereby allowing diplomatic progress even in the absence of agreement on the latter issue.
The need for a dedicated multilateral security framework in North East Asia has long been recognized, including in proposals put forward by Mongolia and several South Korean leaders over several decades. Thus far, however, this goal has proved elusive, with regional security cooperation still relying almost exclusively on bilateral alliances and ad hoc diplomatic initiatives. This has contributed to persistent mistrust, geopolitical competition and limited capacity for managing crises.
The primary governmental mechanism facilitating political and security dialogue among North East Asian countries is the ASEAN Regional Forum. However, with its broad geographic scope, it is not designed to address North East Asia’s challenges, and discussions often remain general and declaratory rather than operational.
In contrast, security dialogues dedicated to North East Asia have been enabled by track 1.5 and track 2 initiatives. Notably, theNortheast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD)—bringing together officials and scholars from the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the USA—focuses on reducing the risk of military conflict. Another track 1.5 initiative, the Mongolia-led Ulaanbaatar Dialogue (UBD), engages a broader set of participants on a wider range of regional issues. Such platforms provide valuable communication channels, but their informal nature limits direct policy impact. Indeed, the central aim of both the NEACD and the UBD is to lay the groundwork for a formal regional security framework.
The Six-Party Talks marked the most significant steps towards North East Asia security cooperation at track 1 level. Among other things, the process—which itself ended up serving as a model for regional coordination—established a working group on a Northeast Asia peace and security mechanism. This was in line with the 2005 joint statement where the six parties committed to ‘negotiate a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula at an appropriate separate forum’ and ‘to explore ways and means for promoting security cooperation in Northeast Asia’. Although the working group became defunct with the collapse of the Six-Party Talks in 2009, it demonstrated the potential for a multilateral dialogue platform involving major regional actors.
The subsequent lack of momentum in attempts to start up high-level security dialogue in North East Asia has been attributed to confrontational regional dynamics, a preoccupation with deterrence and limited incentives for North Korea to join related initiatives, which tend to prioritize denuclearization. However, these obstacles could be mitigated if the dialogue were focused on maintaining regional stability—particularly preventing war and nuclear weapon use—and excluded the denuclearization issue.
Elements of a future North East Asian security framework
As argued in a recent proposal, cooperative security in North East Asia would be best pursued through flexible arrangements allowing both informal and formal dialogues in different formats, resembling the precedent set by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Noting the abovementioned obstacles, however, the proposal regards any top-down governmental approach akin to the 1975 Helsinki Final Act as unrealistic.
Nevertheless, some kind of statement outlining shared goals and principles would arguably be needed as a common frame of reference for regional dialogue. Insofar as those goals would be limited to maintaining regional stability, consensus might also be achievable. More specifically, the dialogue could explore possibilities for sustained military communication channels as well as transparency and confidence-building measures similar to those in the Vienna Document. With respect to the Korean peninsula, it could also consider ways to revive elements of the CMA to address military incidents between the two Koreas.
The reason for excluding denuclearization from the agenda would be to ensure North Korean participation. While politically challenging for China, Japan, South Korea and other North East Asian countries, such an approach would be prudent, as continued insistence on this unrealistic goal is counterproductive for efforts to stabilize the region. At the same time, regional stability dialogue would not rule out talks on nuclear arms control or disarmament with North Korea if an opportunity arises outside of this framework. Meanwhile, the region’s nuclear-armed states could use the dialogue to address escalation risks tied to their deterrence postures and to strengthen the norm against nuclear testing.
Ideally, a multilateral security dialogue in North East Asia would include all regional states—China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, Russia and South Korea—as well as the USA, given its deep involvement in regional dynamics. Although it was not part of the Six-Party Talks, Mongolia’s inclusion in any future framework would be valuable—both to draw on the unofficial dialogues it hosts and to capitalize on its neutral status. Indeed, Mongolia would be a potential candidate for launching the process. Although previous efforts towards such formal dialogue have been unsuccessful, a shared assessment on growing risks could help to garner the necessary stakeholder support today.
While the idea of a regional security framework in North East Asia is not new—and past efforts have fallen short—the current context of heightened risks and the failure of bilateralism calls for a renewed push. The key value of the proposed regional stability dialogue lies in its potential to set aside the seemingly irreconcilable issue of denuclearization, thus potentially facilitating inter-Korean reconciliation and risk reduction, to the benefit of the entire region. Beyond their growing stake in averting further deterioration of the security situation, other actors—notably China, the USA and Japan—could also use this framework to manage their respective adversarial relations.
The authors would like to acknowledge the Korea Foundation for its support for SIPRI's research on this topic.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Dr Tytti Erästö is a Senior Researcher in the SIPRI Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme.
Fei Su is a Senior Researcher in the SIPRI China and Asia Security Programme.
Despite an invitation to dialogue extended by the president of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), Lee Jae Myung, to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), the long-standing conflict on the Korean Peninsula does not appear any closer to resolution. So far, Lee’s overtures have received a frosty response from North Korea, which sees little incentive for inter-Korean reconciliation in the absence of engagement with the United States.
Although both US President Donald J. Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have indicated openness to resuming engagement over the past year, the US objective of denuclearization is deeply at odds with North Korea’s heavy reliance on nuclear deterrence. Hopes for renewed diplomacy remain fragile against the backdrop of the USA’s inconsistent approach the last time Kim engaged with Trump, when a mutual commitment to confidence building in 2018 was followed by the latter’s one-sided denuclearization demands in 2019, spoiling North Korea’s appetite for compromise. Trump’s policy towards Iran—which the USA has attacked twice during nuclear negotiations, with the goals suddenly shifting from non-proliferation to regime change—has likely further reinforced North Korea’s perceived need to hold on to nuclear weapons to ensure its survival.
Meanwhile, persistent tensions on the Korean peninsula, the presence of large-scale military forces and nuclear weapons, and doubts about US commitments to its allies have created a volatile situation that risks spiralling out of control. There is an urgent need for preventive measures. A broader multilateral dialogue on regional stability in North East Asia could offer an alternative—and potentially more sustainable—framework for advancing inter-Korean reconciliation and risk reduction, notably by helping to decouple these much-needed efforts from the divisive issue of denuclearization.
The checkered history of diplomatic engagement
Since the early 1990s, diplomatic efforts on the Korean peninsula have focused primarily on bilateral channels between North Korea and South Korea and between North Korea and the USA. Even when pursued separately, these diplomatic tracks are closely linked. Inter-Korean reconciliation efforts have helped to create a more favourable political environment for North Korean–US nuclear diplomacy, while the latter has helped to reduce tensions between the two Koreas. Conversely, sustaining inter-Korean diplomacy without simultaneous North Korean–US engagement has proved difficult. With the diplomatic impasse between North Korea and the USA more entrenched than ever, the prospects of meaningful progress in inter‑Korean reconciliation appear poor.
Initially, the issue of denuclearization in relation to North Korea meant ensuring its compliance with non-proliferation obligations. Even though North Korea had in 1985 acceded to the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), nuclear activities continued to raise compliance concerns. The 1994 Agreed Framework between the USA and North Korea marked significant progress in addressing these concerns. Under the agreement, North Korea froze its plutonium production in exchange for energy assistance and other benefits. After eight years of implementation, the Agreed Framework was abandoned in 2002 by the US administration of President George W. Bush.
The USA’s March 2003 invasion of Iraq—a country Bush had characterized as part of the ‘axis of evil’, alongside Iran and North Korea—raised the prospect of similar forced regime change in North Korea. This contributed to North Korea’s decision to withdraw from the NPT in January 2003.
From that point onwards, international efforts shifted from non-proliferation to the far more elusive goal of nuclear disarmament—that is, dismantling North Korea’s nuclear programme and its expanding nuclear arsenal. Since its first nuclear test in 2006, North Korea has been subject to United Nations sanctions aimed at pressuring the country to rejoin the NPT and abandon its nuclear weapons and related programmes ‘in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner’. While signalling international condemnation and imposing heavy economic costs, this coercive approach has failed to bring North Korea any closer to nuclear disarmament.
Instead, North Korea has expanded nuclear warhead production and the development of associated delivery vehicles over the past two decades. Between the collapse of the Agreed Framework in 2002 and 2018, its only nuclear-related concession was a short-lived suspension of plutonium production in 2007–08 in return for sanctions relief and fuel deliveries. This took place during the China-led Six-Party Talks, which sought the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula while also establishing working groups on issues such as regional security, normalization of political relations and economic cooperation. These talks collapsed in 2009 amid confrontational dynamics around North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests and the resulting UN sanctions.
Tensions around North Korea’s nuclear programme—which peaked in 2017 with mutual nuclear threats by Kim and Trump—gave way to nuclear diplomacy in 2018, facilitated by inter-Korean engagement under South Korean President Moon Jae-in. At the June 2018 Singapore Summit, Kim and Trump committed to denuclearization through a gradual confidence-building approach. Practical steps taken by North Korea included halting nuclear and missile tests, shutting down the 5 MWe Yongbyon reactor and dismantling the Punggye-ri test site, while the USA suspended major joint military exercises with South Korea.
However, momentum was lost at the February 2019 Hanoi Summit, when the USA suddenly demanded North Korea’s full denuclearization as a precondition for sanctions relief. Although the Trump administration later shifted to a more limited objective in working-level talks—freezing North Korea’s plutonium and enriched uranium production—these broke down in October 2019. Apart from the souring of bilateral relations post-Hanoi, this reflected the modest concessions that the USA was offering in return, suggesting that denuclearization remained a precondition for substantive sanctions relief. The USA had also not reciprocated North Korea’s nuclear concessions beyond suspending military exercises.
The collapse of North Korean–US diplomacy in 2019 was followed by years of non-engagement. Although the USA signalled openness to diplomacy under President Joe Biden, it prioritized deterrence and punitive measures towards North Korea, which partly explains the latter’s reluctance to engage. Closer ties with Russia have also bolstered North Korea’s energy security and economy, thus reducing its incentives to seek sanctions relief through talks with the USA.
Obstacles to North Korean–US re-engagement
During Trump’s second presidential term, he and Kim have indicated a readiness to resume bilateral engagement, with Kim saying in February 2026 that ‘we have no reason not to get along with the United States if it respects our country’s current status, as defined in the North Korean constitution, and drops its hostile policy toward North Korea’. North Korea’s updated constitution describes the country as a ‘nuclear state’. While Trump has described North Korea as a ‘sort of a nuclear power’, the stated US goal remains complete denuclearization, highlighting a persistent gap in positions.
In principle, compromise could be possible if denuclearization is treated as a long-term goal contingent on resolving the underlying political conflict between North Korea and the USA. Specifically, North Korea might accept a freeze on fissile material production, similar to what Trump sought in late 2019, in exchange for meaningful sanctions relief and confidence-building steps reducing its perceived need to expand its nuclear arsenal.
The problem is that Trump has garnered a poor reputation for compromise or keeping his word. North Korea experienced this first hand at Hanoi. Current US policy towards Iran provides another warning example; after pursuing nuclear diplomacy in a manner that resembled blackmail, Trump abandoned talks in favour of eliminating Iran’s nuclear programme—and, since 28 February, its government. This can only be expected to reinforce North Korea’s determination to retain nuclear weapons as protection against US-imposed regime change.
The inter-Korean diplomatic deadlock and its long-term implications
South Korea’s policy towards the North tends to swing from engagement to confrontation with successive progressive and conservative administrations, revealing deep ambivalence and susceptibility to negative dynamics in North Korean–US relations.
After the failure of the ‘trustpolitik’ initiative and a subsequent focus on deterrence under the administration of President Park Geun-hye (2013–17), inter-Korean reconciliation under President Moon culminated in the September 2018 Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA). The agreement included significant confidence-building measures to stabilize the border between the two countries. However, after North Korean–US talks collapsed in late 2019, the CMA gradually began to erode, particularly with North Korea’s demolition in June 2020 of the inter-Korean liaison office that had been established under the agreement.
Inter-Korean relations deteriorated further under the conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol (2022–25). After South Korea’s partial suspension of the CMA in response to North Korea launching a reconnaissance satellite in 2023, the agreement finally collapsed in June 2024 amid increasing hostility—marked by North Korea’s ‘trash ballons’ campaign, trilateral Japanese–South Korean–US military exercises and the formalization of South Korea’s pre-emptive military doctrine, which included plans to decapitate the North Korean leadership. Amid strong popular support for boosting nuclear deterrence to counter the perceived threat from the North, President Yoon even floated the idea of an indigenous nuclear arsenal.
Representing yet another pendulum shift, the progressive President Lee, who took office in June 2025, seeks to usher in a ‘new era of peaceful coexistence and shared growth’ in the Korean peninsula through ‘“exchange,” “normalization,” and “denuclearization”’. North Korea has viewed these efforts with suspicion, characterizing them as a cover for stripping North Korea of its primary means of national survival: nuclear weapons. This is despite the fact that Lee—in line with several expert assessments—has questioned the practical feasibility of denuclearization, instead viewing it as a long-term objective. Another fundamental disagreement concerns the reunification of the peninsula, on which the two countries still agreed in 2018; North Korea renounced this goal in 2024 while South Korea still considers it a central policy objective, with an emphasis on ‘peaceful co-existence’ under President Lee.
While seeking to navigate away from these divisive issues, Lee has also recognized the critical role of North Korean–US engagement, stating that, ‘if the United States and North Korea talk and their relations improve, inter-Korean relations can also improve.’ However, the reverse is also true; continued deadlock in North Korean–US diplomacy risks discrediting Lee’s conciliatory approach, re-empowering South Korean hardliners and perpetuating the dangerous regional status quo. Moreover, uncertainties over US security commitments could prompt South Korea—already moving towards nuclear latency—to develop its own nuclear weapons, with Japan and Taiwan possibly following suit. This would further destabilize the region, with repercussions increasingly extending beyond the Korean Peninsula, notably affecting China.
Reviving the idea of North East Asian regional security dialogue
Rather than pinning their hopes on North Korean–US engagement, North East Asian countries could seek to prevent the further deterioration of their security environment through renewed efforts at regional security dialogue. Insofar as such a dialogue would focus on fostering stability, it could help decouple risk reduction and confidence building from denuclearization, thereby allowing diplomatic progress even in the absence of agreement on the latter issue.
The need for a dedicated multilateral security framework in North East Asia has long been recognized, including in proposals put forward by Mongolia and several South Korean leaders over several decades. Thus far, however, this goal has proved elusive, with regional security cooperation still relying almost exclusively on bilateral alliances and ad hoc diplomatic initiatives. This has contributed to persistent mistrust, geopolitical competition and limited capacity for managing crises.
The primary governmental mechanism facilitating political and security dialogue among North East Asian countries is the ASEAN Regional Forum. However, with its broad geographic scope, it is not designed to address North East Asia’s challenges, and discussions often remain general and declaratory rather than operational.
In contrast, security dialogues dedicated to North East Asia have been enabled by track 1.5 and track 2 initiatives. Notably, the Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue (NEACD)—bringing together officials and scholars from the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia and the USA—focuses on reducing the risk of military conflict. Another track 1.5 initiative, the Mongolia-led Ulaanbaatar Dialogue (UBD), engages a broader set of participants on a wider range of regional issues. Such platforms provide valuable communication channels, but their informal nature limits direct policy impact. Indeed, the central aim of both the NEACD and the UBD is to lay the groundwork for a formal regional security framework.
The Six-Party Talks marked the most significant steps towards North East Asia security cooperation at track 1 level. Among other things, the process—which itself ended up serving as a model for regional coordination—established a working group on a Northeast Asia peace and security mechanism. This was in line with the 2005 joint statement where the six parties committed to ‘negotiate a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula at an appropriate separate forum’ and ‘to explore ways and means for promoting security cooperation in Northeast Asia’. Although the working group became defunct with the collapse of the Six-Party Talks in 2009, it demonstrated the potential for a multilateral dialogue platform involving major regional actors.
The subsequent lack of momentum in attempts to start up high-level security dialogue in North East Asia has been attributed to confrontational regional dynamics, a preoccupation with deterrence and limited incentives for North Korea to join related initiatives, which tend to prioritize denuclearization. However, these obstacles could be mitigated if the dialogue were focused on maintaining regional stability—particularly preventing war and nuclear weapon use—and excluded the denuclearization issue.
Elements of a future North East Asian security framework
As argued in a recent proposal, cooperative security in North East Asia would be best pursued through flexible arrangements allowing both informal and formal dialogues in different formats, resembling the precedent set by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Noting the abovementioned obstacles, however, the proposal regards any top-down governmental approach akin to the 1975 Helsinki Final Act as unrealistic.
Nevertheless, some kind of statement outlining shared goals and principles would arguably be needed as a common frame of reference for regional dialogue. Insofar as those goals would be limited to maintaining regional stability, consensus might also be achievable. More specifically, the dialogue could explore possibilities for sustained military communication channels as well as transparency and confidence-building measures similar to those in the Vienna Document. With respect to the Korean peninsula, it could also consider ways to revive elements of the CMA to address military incidents between the two Koreas.
The reason for excluding denuclearization from the agenda would be to ensure North Korean participation. While politically challenging for China, Japan, South Korea and other North East Asian countries, such an approach would be prudent, as continued insistence on this unrealistic goal is counterproductive for efforts to stabilize the region. At the same time, regional stability dialogue would not rule out talks on nuclear arms control or disarmament with North Korea if an opportunity arises outside of this framework. Meanwhile, the region’s nuclear-armed states could use the dialogue to address escalation risks tied to their deterrence postures and to strengthen the norm against nuclear testing.
Ideally, a multilateral security dialogue in North East Asia would include all regional states—China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, Russia and South Korea—as well as the USA, given its deep involvement in regional dynamics. Although it was not part of the Six-Party Talks, Mongolia’s inclusion in any future framework would be valuable—both to draw on the unofficial dialogues it hosts and to capitalize on its neutral status. Indeed, Mongolia would be a potential candidate for launching the process. Although previous efforts towards such formal dialogue have been unsuccessful, a shared assessment on growing risks could help to garner the necessary stakeholder support today.
While the idea of a regional security framework in North East Asia is not new—and past efforts have fallen short—the current context of heightened risks and the failure of bilateralism calls for a renewed push. The key value of the proposed regional stability dialogue lies in its potential to set aside the seemingly irreconcilable issue of denuclearization, thus potentially facilitating inter-Korean reconciliation and risk reduction, to the benefit of the entire region. Beyond their growing stake in averting further deterioration of the security situation, other actors—notably China, the USA and Japan—could also use this framework to manage their respective adversarial relations.
The authors would like to acknowledge the Korea Foundation for its support for SIPRI's research on this topic.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)