'North Korean denuclearization' disappears from South Korea-U.S. call

The foreign ministers of South Korea and the United States spoke by phone on Monday. With concerns mounting over a lack of communication between the allies — to the point that Seoul learned through social media of U.S. President Donald Trump’s unilateral instruction to scale back joint military exercises — it was welcome, if belated, that the ministers reaffirmed close communication and coordination.

The U.S. State Department said that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stressed the need to maintain close coordination on matters essential to the alliance and agreed to continue more in-depth discussions in person.

But one aspect of the call remains troubling: Neither country’s readout contains the phrase “denuclearization of North Korea” or “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs referred only to communication and coordination with Washington on resolving the North Korean nuclear issue, and the U.S. statement did not mention the nuclear issue at all.

That represents a notable change from a South Korea-U.S. foreign ministers’ meeting in February, when Washington referred to the complete denuclearization of North Korea while Seoul did not mention denuclearization, and a trilateral meeting in July, when the United States and Japan called for North Korea’s complete denuclearization while South Korea referred to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

The Lee Jae Myung administration now advocates a road map resembling the phased approach discussed during the six-party talks in the 2000s: freeze, reduce and ultimately dismantle North Korea’s nuclear program. It has effectively pushed denuclearization further down the agenda.

Trump, meanwhile, recently avoided answering when asked whether denuclearization remained a goal of U.S.-North Korea talks. Against that backdrop, dropping “North Korean denuclearization” from a call between the countries’ top diplomats could signal that Seoul and Washington, eager to restart dialogue with Pyongyang, are accommodating North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s insistence that denuclearization is nonnegotiable.

Concerns are already growing in Washington and Seoul that renewed U.S.-North Korea talks could focus not on denuclearization but on arms control, effectively accepting North Korea as a nuclear-armed state.

Dialogue with North Korea needs to resume. But appearing to abandon the goal of North Korean denuclearization before negotiations even begin would dramatically lower the threshold for talks and mean entering negotiations on an already tilted playing field.

It is questionable whether people in South Korea, the United States and Japan, who remain exposed to North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats, would accept such an approach. Dialogue should not require surrendering the fundamental objective before the two sides even sit down.