Washington and Seoul are coordinating closely on their shared goal of convincing North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons, an official with South Korea’s presidential office told the Yonhap News Agency on Sunday.
The official was responding to President Donald Trump’s comment to reporters that North Korea is “sort of a nuclear power” and has “a lot of nuclear weapons.”
Why It Matters
The North’s advancing nuclear and ballistic missile programs under the Kim Jong Un regime are a major driver of tensions on the Korean Peninsula, now at their highest in years. Pyongyang maintains these programs are essential for national defense, citing a “provocative” rise in military cooperation between U.S., South Korean, and Japanese forces.
No U.S. administration has recognized the North as a nuclear power, a move strongly opposed by the South, which considers such a move tantamount to legitimizing the United Nations-sanctioned nuclear program and a violation of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which recognizes only five nuclear-weapon states: the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom.
Newsweek reached out by email to the White House and the North Korean embassy in Beijing, China, with requests for comment.
What To Know
Trump, speaking with reporters as he departed for the first tour of Asia of his second term, suggested he might be open to recognizing North Korea as a nuclear power.
“When you say they have to be recognized as a nuclear power—well, they got a lot of nuclear weapons. I’ll say that,” he said when asked about Kim’s insistence that recognition is a prerequisite for reengaging in talks with Washington, per Bloomberg.
Trump, who met with Kim three times during his first term in a failed bid to get the latter to walk back his nuclear program, stressed the pair have “a very good relationship.”
An official at the office of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung stressed Washington and Seoul continue to pursue the goal of denuclearization, telling Yonhap Trump’s remark can be understood in the context of Kim’s expanding nuclear capabilities.
“South Korea and the U.S. are closely cooperating in accordance with their joint goal of the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic.
In an August interview, Lee said he would support a freeze of the North’s nuclear and missile development but stressed any negotiations must hinge on eventual denuclearization. The South Korean leader also suggested Washington had enabled the North to expand its nuclear arsenal through a failed policy of “strategic patience.”
North Korea boasts roughly 50 nuclear warheads, according to estimates by the Federation of American Scientists, and South Korean officials believe their neighbor has enough fissile material to build an additional 15 to 20 warheads per year.
In 2023, the country enshrined nuclear weapons in its constitution, underscoring how salient the Kim regime views the capability to its survival.
In an address to North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament last month, Kim said he had fond memories of Trump and said there was “no reason not to” resume talks if the U.S. abandons its “absurd pursuit of other’s denuclearization and recognizing the reality.
What People Are Saying
Kim told parliamentarians in the September 21 speech: “We have become a nuclear state, and this was an inevitable choice we made at the crossroads of rise and fall of our state. That is why we enshrined our nuclear possession in the supreme law of our Republic as something sacred and absolute, which cannot be affected or amended in any case.”
What Happens Next
Trump, who arrived in Japan on Monday, will depart for Seoul on Wednesday to meet with Lee before delivering a speech the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. He is also expected to Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the event, in hopes of securing a deal to end the tit-for-tat trade war.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Trump said he was “open 100 percent” to a potential last-minute meeting with Kim