| Questions Raised by a Confused Peace Initiative

On August 5, 2026, the presidential office hosted the government's second-half policy briefing by the ministries responsible for foreign affairs and national security, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Unification, and Ministry of National Defense. The Ministry of Unification titled its press release that day, "Three Feet of Ice, but Efforts to Build Peaceful Coexistence on the Korean Peninsula Will Continue."¹⁾ The title acknowledged the depth of the freeze in inter-Korean relations while expressing a determination not to abandon efforts to build peace. Unification Minister Chung Dong-young presented the Lee Jae Myung administration's plan for advancing peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula in its second year and reported that the ministry would pursue a "Peacemaker-Pacemaker Plus" initiative in response to changes in the situation on the Korean Peninsula. The plan set out three basic directions: mutually beneficial cooperation that respects differences, peaceful conflict resolution and crisis management, and a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula and peace in Northeast Asia. To this end, the ministry stated that it would reject confrontational and hostile terminology such as "unification by absorption" and "archenemy," begin restoring the September 19 Military Agreement, and initiate discussions on transitioning from the armistice regime to a peace regime in order to facilitate a U.S.-North Korea summit and build momentum for four-party dialogue among South Korea, North Korea, the United States, and China.²⁾

Responding to the Ministry of Unification's briefing, President Lee Jae Myung said that "the policy of peaceful coexistence has aspects that can be politically exploited" and that "we need to be very careful." Regarding the proposal to unilaterally restore the September 19 Military Agreement, he questioned whether "acting on our goodwill would actually contribute to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula," adding that he ultimately had doubts.³⁾ The following day, Foreign Minister Cho Hyun used more direct language to put the brakes on the Ministry of Unification's proposal. At a press briefing, he described the ministry's four-party dialogue proposal as "a hope based on idealism" and said, "Minister Chung was speaking in idealistic terms, so I hope people will discount it accordingly."⁴⁾ Regarding the "Peacemaker-Pacemaker Plus" initiative, he also drew a clear line, stating that "this is not language that was discussed and agreed upon by the Standing Committee of our National Security Council (NSC)." The Ministry of Unification immediately pushed back, asking, "Were we the ones who exposed the disagreement?" Minister Chung also responded that "it takes ideals to change reality."⁵⁾ The media largely interpreted the exchange as a direct clash between the "pro-alliance camp" and the "pro-autonomy camp."

On the surface, this may appear to be an interagency power struggle and a longstanding dispute between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Unification, rooted in their fundamentally different views of North Korea. The real issue, however, lies elsewhere. It is necessary to examine the point at which the "pacemaker" role that President Lee Jae Myung claimed for himself in front of President Trump during the ROK-U.S. summit last August collides with the "peacemaker" legacy of Lim Dong-won, one of the principal architects of North Korea policy under the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations.

This report begins with the reality of the Korean Peninsula, where denuclearization of North Korea, long regarded as the cardinal principle of South Korea's negotiations over the North Korean nuclear issue, is losing its foundation, while Kim Jong Un's North Korea, advocating the "two hostile states" doctrine, has withdrawn all interest not only in inter-Korean dialogue but also in initiatives for peace on the Korean Peninsula. It first examines how the measures presented by the Ministry of Unification in its August policy briefing represent not simply one ministry's fixation on producing results, but a recurrence of the structural dilemma that has repeatedly emerged throughout the thirty-year history of negotiations over North Korea's nuclear program. It then proposes the policy direction that the Lee Jae Myung administration should pursue in its second year.

| Peacemaker vs. Pacemaker

The term pacemaker has two meanings. It can refer to a medical device that regulates an irregular heartbeat through external signals, or to a runner in a marathon who sets the pace for a leading contender before stepping aside shortly before the finish line. The former creates a rhythm itself, while the latter follows a given rhythm or sets the rhythm for someone else. A peacemaker, by contrast, refers to an active actor who mediates between parties to a conflict, designs negotiations, and works to bring about an agreement.

Lim Dong-won, who played a leading role in designing policies of reconciliation and cooperation toward North Korea under the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations, expressed in his memoir, Peacemaker: Twenty Years of Inter-Korean Relations and the North Korean Nuclear Issue, his conviction that South Korea should become an active architect of peace on the Korean Peninsula. He regarded the June 15 Joint Declaration of 2000 and the October 4 Declaration of 2007 as representative achievements of the "peacemaker" initiative. Despite the outcomes of the two inter-Korean summits, however, there was no fundamental progress in inter-Korean relations, and North Korea did not cease its military provocations, including the development of nuclear weapons as its "absolute weapon." Lim viewed Washington's hostile policy toward North Korea as the fundamental cause of North Korea's nuclear development and concluded that the George W. Bush administration had no genuine intention of guaranteeing the security of the North Korean regime. He ultimately believed that South Korea had to become a "peacemaker" by advancing inter-Korean relations in order to open the way for denuclearization and ultimately establish a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.

Lim Dong-won's "peacemaker" approach rested on a causal relationship. The logic was that improved inter-Korean relations would give North Korea an incentive to normalize relations with the international community, and that this incentive would generate momentum for denuclearization negotiations. This premise remained partially valid through the 2000s. The situation, however, changed fundamentally after the 2019 "Hanoi no-deal." After the Trump-Kim summit ended without an agreement, North Korea began to question the path of securing regime security through negotiations itself. The subsequent COVID-19 border closure diminished the need for dialogue, while North Korea developed an alternative means of sustaining its regime through military and economic cooperation with Russia without having to rely on South Korea's economic leverage. The constitutional revisions of 2023 and 2024 and the declaration of the "two hostile states" doctrine marked the culmination of this trend. Once South Korea was formally defined not as a partner for unification but as the "primary hostile state," the causal logic underlying Lim's approach, in which improved inter-Korean relations would lead to denuclearization, collapsed.

At his first ROK-U.S. summit after taking office, held on August 25 last year, President Lee Jae Myung said, "If President Trump takes on the role of peacemaker, I will assist him as a pacemaker." This was a pragmatic choice that acknowledged the reality that Kim Jong Un had completely rejected the legacy of his predecessors and refused all inter-Korean dialogue. With Kim rendering the discourse on denuclearization itself ineffective and pursuing an assertive foreign policy, Lee viewed the United States as the only viable means of bringing North Korea back to the negotiating table. Although the Lee Jae Myung administration, which took office in 2025, declared its intention to pursue reconciliation and cooperation with North Korea under a policy of "peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula," Kim Jong Un has remained unmoved.

The Ministry of Unification's policy briefing advances the argument that, on the premise that a presidential-level "pacemaker plan" is already in operation, the government should pursue an expanded, government-wide effort led by the ministry under the banner of "Pacemaker Plus." It is worth examining whether Lim Dong-won's peacemaker logic, which sought to drive denuclearization through inter-Korean relations, has now returned in a different form under the name "Plus," even as North Korea's door remains completely closed.

| The Roots of Policy Discord: A Structural Dilemma Beyond Interagency Conflict

Reducing the current controversy to a policy struggle between the "pro-alliance camp" and the "pro-autonomy camp" risks missing the essence of the issue. It is worth examining whether two structural factors that have repeatedly contributed to the failure of negotiations over North Korea's nuclear program over the past thirty years are now reemerging within the government.

The first is a fundamental divergence of interests among the actors involved. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs prioritizes building negotiating leverage within the framework of the ROK-U.S. alliance and international coordination, while restoring channels for inter-Korean dialogue is close to the Ministry of Unification's raison d'être. In its assessment of the situation, the Ministry of Unification's policy briefing acknowledged that North Korea reaffirmed its designation of the Republic of Korea as "the most hostile entity" at the 9th Party Congress in February this year, removed the "Three Principles of National Reunification" from its constitution in March, and, in a June 13 Foreign Ministry statement, denounced the government's peaceful coexistence policy as "a deceptive signboard and a farce" and declared that "denuclearization is a closed matter." The ministry thus acknowledged that the current environment is far from conducive to pursuing inter-Korean dialogue. Yet its assessment of the international environment, which stated that it had "confirmed a shared understanding among neighboring countries, including the United States, China, and Russia, of the need to establish peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula," appears closer to wishful thinking.⁶⁾ It may be only natural that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not agree with the Ministry of Unification's assessment of the policy priorities of the United States, China, and Russia, an area that does not even fall within the latter's primary jurisdiction.

The controversy surrounding Minister Chung is also not new. During last year's policy briefing, he drew criticism for proposals focused on resuming inter-Korean dialogue without sufficiently taking the international environment into account. In April this year, his remarks concerning uranium enrichment facilities also provided grounds for the United States to take measures restricting intelligence sharing with South Korea on North Korea.⁷⁾

The second is the risk of misjudging the possibility of changes in North Korean regime behavior. Underlying the Ministry of Unification's approach is an expectation that if South Korea continues to extend humanitarian gestures and propose dialogue, North Korea will eventually respond. This expectation, however, diverges from reality. North Korea's "two hostile states" doctrine combines a defensive choice aimed at addressing fears of regime competition with South Korea and blocking the spread of the Korean Wave (Hallyu) with an assertive declaration of separation backed by its confidence as a nuclear-armed state. The Reactionary Thought and Culture Rejection Act and the Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act, enacted in the 2020s, can be viewed as stringent social control laws that treat South Korean culture, language, and ideas as threats to the regime. At the same time, the rapid shift in the Kim Jong Un regime's attitude toward South Korea following the 2018 Panmunjom and Pyongyang summits, from welcome to confusion, disappointment, and ultimately hatred, together with the severance measures that accelerated after Kim Yo Jong's 2020 statement that "it is time to break with the South Koreans once and for all," appears to reflect a fundamental turn toward hostility against South Korea following the withdrawal of political and military trust.

In its policy briefing, the Ministry of Unification cited a June 2026 survey of people in their 20s and 30s conducted by the Peaceful Unification Advisory Council, in which 76.5 percent responded that "coexistence should take priority," as a basis for its pledge to realize peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula in "people's lives today." In the Korea Institute for National Unification's 2025 survey across all age groups, the proportion favoring peaceful coexistence also exceeded 60 percent for the first time in 2025, reaching a record high.⁸⁾ The more important finding of that survey, however, is that only 49 percent responded positively regarding the necessity of unification, the lowest level since KINU began conducting its own survey in 2014. It would therefore be difficult to use these findings as evidence that the South Korean public favors peaceful two-state relations oriented toward eventual unification despite North Korea's provocations following its declaration of the "two hostile states" doctrine.

In addition, the restoration of trilateral cooperation among North Korea, China, and Russia has significantly weakened the economic leverage that South Korea once possessed. Russia's energy technology and China's economic assistance are rapidly filling the space left by the suspension of the Kaesong Industrial Complex and Mount Kumgang tourism. The risk that proposals to restore the September 19 Military Agreement or resume humanitarian exchanges could remain unilateral gestures of goodwill without any response from North Korea arises from these structural conditions. Ultimately, the current policy discord is less a product of bureaucratic self-interest between the Ministry of Unification and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs than a reflection of fundamental philosophical differences over how to address the North Korean nuclear issue and establish a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, challenges that successive conservative and progressive governments have pursued for thirty years but repeatedly failed to resolve.

| From Pacemaker to Peace Architect

President Lee Jae Myung's decision to cast himself as a pacemaker can be understood as a difficult but pragmatic choice by a South Korean president unable to generate momentum for the resumption of inter-Korean dialogue through South Korea's efforts alone. Article 4 of the Constitution states that "the Republic of Korea shall seek unification and shall formulate and carry out a policy of peaceful unification based on the principles of freedom and democracy," while Article 66, Paragraph 3 imposes upon the president "the duty to pursue sincerely the peaceful unification of the homeland." This is why the Lee Jae Myung administration, now entering its second year, must translate diplomatic rhetoric into concrete outcomes.

The policy direction becomes clearer when reorganized into a three-stage structure: crisis management and stabilization in the short term, extended deterrence and arms control in the medium term, and denuclearization and a peace regime in the long term.

The short-term objective should be crisis management and stabilization. Following sufficient deliberation, the government should consider taking unilateral measures that can be implemented using South Korea's own territory, budget, and administrative capacity, such as restoring the Gyeongwon Railway Line, reopening the DMZ Peace Trail and Peace Connection Train, and designating Special Peace Economic Zones. Measures that require alliance coordination, however, such as establishing no-fly zones, should be reframed not as matters of "unilateral implementation" but as matters of "alliance persuasion." As part of its implementation strategy, the Ministry of Unification has stated that it would "consistently implement measures that we can pursue independently," and has presented the establishment of no-fly zones to restore the September 19 Military Agreement as a representative example.⁹⁾ Portraying such a measure as a declaratory step that can be implemented quickly reflects a misjudgment resulting from the ministry's haste. In reality, it requires negotiations to resolve specific issues one by one, including support for reconnaissance assets to compensate for potential gaps in surveillance of North Korea and questions concerning the jurisdiction of the United Nations Command. The ministries principally responsible for such negotiations are not the Ministry of Unification but the Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Preventing accidental clashes is indeed an appropriate short-term objective, but it must be made clear that the path to achieving it lies not in an inter-Korean declaration but in coordination between South Korea and the United States.

The medium-term objective should be extended deterrence against nuclear and missile threats and arms control. The Ministry of Unification's proposed "peace-led strategy of prioritizing a halt to North Korea's nuclear program" is, in practice, close to a nuclear freeze and is also consistent with President Lee's phased approach of "halt, reduction, and dismantlement," which he outlined at the UN General Assembly. However, because this objective depends on the willingness of the United States to resume negotiations, it is not an agenda that South Korea can accomplish on its own. South Korea's role should be to elevate this intermediate objective into a shared arms control agenda between South Korea and the United States and, ultimately, among South Korea, the United States, and Japan through the Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG), established under the 2023 Washington Declaration.

The long-term objective should be denuclearization and the establishment of a peace regime. These objectives should emerge naturally from the accumulation of progress toward short- and medium-term goals over an extended period rather than being pushed forward immediately. Initiatives such as four-party dialogue, participation in the Eastern Economic Forum, and transitioning from the armistice regime to a peace regime may remain valid long-term objectives, but attempting to accelerate them at a time when North Korea refuses dialogue itself could produce significant adverse effects.

Ultimately, South Korea should aspire to be neither a "peacemaker" confined to mediating a particular negotiation nor a passive "pacemaker" that reacts to the rhythm set by major powers. It should become a "Rules-Based Peace Architect" that designs and leads the international norms and institutional frameworks for peace on the Korean Peninsula. South Korea ranks twelfth in the world in nominal GDP and approximately fifth or sixth in military power. It should take the lead within the framework of ROK-U.S.-Japan cooperation in shaping the discourse around realistic intermediate objectives such as a nuclear freeze and arms control; systematically manage issues requiring alliance coordination, such as the establishment of no-fly zones, through the ROK-U.S.-Japan consultative framework institutionalized at Camp David; and build legitimacy through independently implementable confidence-building measures such as restoring the Gyeongwon Railway Line and promoting the peaceful use of the DMZ.

This requires restructuring the ROK-U.S.-Japan coordination led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the inter-Korean dialogue and humanitarian engagement led by the Ministry of Unification as complementary rather than competing pillars. To make this possible, the government must first reach a minimum level of internal consensus by formally establishing a process for advance coordination centered on the National Security Council.

| A Time for Decision

The policy discord in August appears to be a recurrence of the so-called struggle between the "pro-alliance camp" and the "pro-autonomy camp" that emerged during the Roh Moo-hyun administration. What has changed is that, unlike at the policy briefing last December, when President Lee Jae Myung expressed support for the Ministry of Unification by saying, "That role is indeed one that the Ministry of Unification should play," this time he called for restraint, warning that "there are aspects that can be politically exploited." The fact that the government presented insufficiently developed policies at a presidential policy briefing, its most formal venue, without first completing interagency coordination was a mistake that should not be repeated. Before announcing new resolutions or slogans that cannot be backed by implementation, the NSC should first assess their feasibility and conduct in-depth consultations among the relevant foreign policy and national security ministries. Such a process is necessary to ensure the credibility and consistency of government policy.

There has been growing speculation that a U.S.-North Korea summit could resume once the Iran war comes to an end. Victor Cha, Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), predicted that if Trump and the Republican Party lose the U.S. midterm elections this November, momentum for U.S.-North Korea dialogue could emerge. He suggested that they may "avoid detailed denuclearization negotiations and leave it to the negotiating teams on both sides to work out the specifics over the following six months." At the same time, he assessed that even if a summit takes place, it is unlikely to lead to the resumption of inter-Korean dialogue.¹⁰⁾

For South Korea, this would be an undesirable scenario. It is now time for the Lee Jae Myung administration to provide a coordinated answer to a question it has yet to answer for itself: what role should South Korea play in addressing issues on the Korean Peninsula? The Ministry of Unification is correct that nothing will happen if South Korea simply remains passive. Considering that during the 2018-2019 U.S.-North Korea dialogue, the South Korean government failed to sufficiently persuade China, which ultimately contributed to the rapid loss of momentum behind the historic U.S.-North Korea summits, the potential utility of a four-party dialogue among South Korea, North Korea, the United States, and China should not be dismissed outright. Yet the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is also correct to warn that announcing initiatives without coordination with the countries concerned can undermine the very foundation of trust necessary for negotiations.

For South Korea, which aspires to become an advanced global middle power, the task is to faithfully perform the role of pacemaker while simultaneously preparing to advance within that role as a peace architect. Integrating Lim Dong-won's peacemaker spirit with the alliance coordination embodied in Camp David, and the Ministry of Unification's commitment to dialogue with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' emphasis on international coordination, into a single coherent strategy is the challenge facing the Lee Jae Myung administration in its second year. The fact that a majority of the South Korean public broadly agrees with the direction of peaceful coexistence can at least provide a domestic foundation for attempting such integration. Whatever agreement may ultimately be reached between Trump and Kim Jong Un if South Korea's pacemaker role succeeds, designing the conditions necessary to ensure that its outcome leads to a sustainable structure for peace on the Korean Peninsula will ultimately remain the responsibility of the Lee Jae Myung administration as it enters its second year.

1. Ministry of Unification, "Three Feet of Ice, but Efforts to Build Peaceful Coexistence on the Korean Peninsula Will Continue," press release, August 5, 2026. The expression "three feet of ice" appears to have been inspired by President Xi Jinping's remark during the ROK-China summit held in China in January 2026 that "three feet of ice does not melt all at once, and fruit falls naturally when it ripens." At the time, the Presidential Office interpreted the remark in connection with China's restrictions on Korean cultural content, stating that it understood Xi to mean that "some time needs to pass and [the restrictions] need to be eased in stages and gradually."
2. Ministry of Unification, Written Materials for the Second-Half 2026 Policy Briefing, August 5, 2026.
3. Kim Min-seo, "Ministry of Unification Responds to Criticism over Revealing Differences with Foreign Ministry: 'Were We the Ones Who Exposed the Disagreement?'" Chosun Ilbo, August 6, 2026.
4. Min Seon-hee, "Foreign Ministry Focuses on 'Pacemaker' Role in U.S.-North Korea Dialogue... New Initiatives Require Coordination," Yonhap News Agency, August 6, 2026.
5. Han Sang-hee, "Foreign Ministry: 'Claims of Policy Discord with Unification Ministry Are Not True'...'Coordination Needed on Four-Party Dialogue and Other Issues,'" News 1, August 6, 2026.
6. Ministry of Unification, Written Materials cited above, II.2. Assessment of the Situation and Direction for Response, August 5, 2026.
7. Yoo Shin-mo, "[News Analysis] The President Ultimately Steps In...Controversy over Unification Minister Chung Dong-young's Policy Briefing," NewsPim, August 6, 2026.
8. Lee Sang-sin et al., KINU Unification Perception Survey: Cooperative Internationalism and Belligerent Internationalism (Seoul: Korea Institute for National Unification, 2025).
9. Ministry of Unification, Written Materials cited above, III. Key Policy Priorities, August 5, 2026.
10. Victor Cha, "After Iran: A Scenario for Renewed Trump-Kim Summitry," CSIS, August 13, 2026. https://www.csis.org/analysis/after-iran-scenario-renewed-trump-kim-summitry.

※ The opinions expressed in 'Sejong Focus' are those of the author and do not represent the official views of Sejong Institute.