The Domestic Politics Behind Inter-Korean Relations

Domestic politics significantly shapes the trajectory of inter-Korean relations, leading to different dynamics depending on the government in power in South Korea. Historically, both conservative and progressive governments have pursued the denuclearization of North Korea, but their differing approaches – ranging from pressure to engagement – have produced distinct outcomes.

Under the conservative Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye administrations, their adoption of hardline policies in response to North Korea’s military provocations and nuclear weapons program escalated tensions. North Korea usually found little incentive to engage, since conditional offers of assistance by the conservative governments provided little opportunities to extract concessions. As a result, inter-Korean relations tended to deteriorate under conservative rule.

In contrast, progressive governments under Kim Dae-jung, Roh Moo-hyun, and Moon Jae-in prioritized engagement and dialogue, which allowed North Korea to see more opportunities to extract concessions from South Korea. Consequently, when progressive governments were in power, North Korea often responded positively, leading to a thaw in relations and bilateral summits, although these efforts made little progress on North Korea’s denuclearization.

Regardless of the effectiveness of either approach, the pendulum swing resulting from changes in government has become a defining feature of South Korea’s policy toward North Korea.

This dynamic is currently at play.  Since the conservative Yoon Suk-yeol took office in May 2022, inter-Korean relations have spiraled downward. It is important to note that inter-Korean relations had already soured during the previous government, after the collapse of the North Korea-U.S. summit in Hanoi in 2019. North Korea, embarrassed by the summit’s failure, destroyed the inter-Korean liaison office.

However, recent actions by both North and South Korea demonstrate a deeper breakdown in their relationship. What is driving the policies of the two Koreas toward each other, and what are their political calculations?

Yoon’s North Korea Policy

In South Korea, a hardline policy returned with the inauguration of the Yoon government in 2022. Like other conservative presidents, Yoon has distanced himself from the engagement policy of his progressive predecessor, Moon Jae-in, and stressed South Korea’s conditional engagement with North Korea based on the latter’s commitment to denuclearization.

Under the “Audacious Initiative,” Yoon pledged extensive economic and development assistance to North Korea – ranging from power generation and medical infrastructure to agricultural technology and international investment – in exchange for Pyongyang’s genuine, meaningful steps toward denuclearization.

At the same time, North Korea’s increasingly advancing nuclear and missile capabilities led the Yoon government to place a strong emphasis on national defense and deterrence under the principle of “peace through strength.” Yoon vowed a robust and decisive response to North Korea’s military provocations and WMD threats while calling for South Korea’s development of preemptive strike capabilities to deter and defend South Korea from a North Korean attack.

While reinvigorating the South Korea-U.S. alliance was a top foreign policy priority for Yoon, he also focused on closely coordinating with the Biden administration on North Korea and strengthening U.S. extended deterrence for South Korea. This strategy resulted in bolstering the alliance’s combined defense and deterrence posture and led to the resumption of joint military exercises with the United States.

Concurrently, the Yoon administration underscored that humanitarian assistance to North Korea would be treated as a separate issue, distinct from security and political concerns.

What set the Yoon government apart from the previous conservative governments was its decision to bring human rights to the forefront of Seoul’s North Korea policy, making universal values of freedom and human rights central to its unification policy. This shift aligns with Yoon’s strong belief in shared values, as seen in his consistent emphasis on value-based diplomacy. In every major speech by Yoon, both at home and abroad, freedom and democracy were dominant themes.

For instance, during his inauguration speech, Yoon mentioned “freedom” 30 times and “democracy” seven times, while “North Korea” appeared only five times and “denuclearization” just twice. His first speech at the U.N. General Assembly in September 2022 also centered on freedom rather than North Korea’s denuclearization, a topic usually chosen by his predecessors. Shared norms and values have been deeply embedded in Yoon’s policy.

A Vicious Cycle Returns

South Korea’s return to a pressure-based approach was met with strong resistance from North Korea, which was already pursuing a five-year weapons modernization program, as outlined by top leader Kim Jong Un in a January 2021 speech. Tensions between the two Koreas escalated sharply in 2022, with North Korea conducting a record-breaking number of missile tests – over 90 launches – and threatening tactical nuclear attacks against South Korea.

In February 2023, the South Korean Defense Ministry officially redesignated North Korea as an enemy in its Defense White Paper for the first time in six years. During his state visit to Washington in April 2023, Yoon and Biden announced the Washington Declaration and established a Nuclear Consultative Group for joint planning, information sharing, and deployment of U.S. strategic assets, to bolster nuclear deterrence. Shared concern over North Korea’s growing threats also brought Japan and South Korea closer together, culminating in a historic trilateral summit with Biden at Camp David in August 2023 to enhance their joint response.

In November 2023, North Korea completely scrapped the inter-Korean Comprehensive Military Agreement after the Yoon government partially suspended it in response to North Korea’s satellite launch test. Yet, the real breakdown in inter-Korean relations occurred in late December 2023 when the North Korean leader designated South Korea as a “principal enemy” and abandoned the country’s long-standing unification policy.

In a year-end plenary meeting of the Workers’ Party of Korea’s Central Committee, Kim declared that “reunification can never be achieved with the ROK authorities that defined the ‘unification by absorption’ and ‘unification under liberal democracy’ as their state policy.” He emphasized that this stance “is in sharp contradiction with our line of national reunification based on one nation and one state with two systems.”

Following Kim’s announcement, North Korea swiftly initiated a decoupling from South Korea with a series of unprecedented measures in January 2024. These actions included redefining the Northern Limit Line maritime border, removing unification references from the constitution, and suspending key organizations responsible for inter-Korean affairs. Most notably, North Korea demolished the Arch of Reunification, a monument built in 2000 to honor the vision of national reunification by Kim Il Sung, the country’s founding father, and dismantled the inter-Korean Gyeong-ui rail line, a legacy of Kim Jong Il’s efforts to promote exchange and cooperation between the two Koreas.

Pyongyang’s Calculations

North Korea’s historical antagonism toward South Korea’s conservative governments is nothing new. But in a country like North Korea where past leaders are revered as near-deities, the reversing of their closely-held unification policies was almost unthinkable. So, what led to this significant shift? And what is driving North Korea’s increasingly confrontational stance toward the Yoon government?

Three key factors seem to have shaped Pyongyang’s approach toward South Korea. First and foremost, North Korea’s decision to abandon its unification policy was rooted in its concern over regime stability. Over the years, North Koreans have been increasingly exposed to outside information due to efforts by many North Korean defectors and human rights activists who send information into the country. The North Korean regime has come to see this as a direct threat, as evidenced by the passage of the “Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Act” in 2020, which banned activities of smuggling, storing, and consuming foreign contents and cultural goods, including those from South Korea. Anyone who gets caught violating the law faces severe punishment, including public execution.

In January 2023, North Korea tightened its control even further with the “Pyongyang Cultural Language Protection Act,” which forbids the use of the South Korean language within the country. This move reflects the regime’s deep apprehension about South Korea’s cultural influence, particularly its impact on the younger generation in North Korea.

The growing popularity of South Korean culture, coupled with an increasing awareness of economic prosperity in South Korea, poses a direct challenge to the Kim regime’s legitimacy, which has long been rooted in calls for revolution and socialist struggle. Arguably, the most effective way to turn the North Korean people against South Korea and enhance internal unity in the North is to change the domestic narrative about South Korea by denying them the status of “fellow countrymen” and designating them as the “principal enemy” instead.

Second, South Korea’s call for North Korea’s denuclearization is a non-starter and poses a direct threat to the regime’s legitimacy. For nearly 70 years, North Korea has pursued nuclear weapons development out of a deep fear of external invasion by the U.S. and South Korea. Despite bilateral and multilateral negotiations, including the historic summits between then-U.S. President Donald Trump and Kim in 2018-2019, the regime did not achieve its desired outcomes, further entrenching its belief that nuclear weapons are essential for deterring war.

As North Korea continues to advance its nuclear weapons capability, the space for negotiation appears to have significantly narrowed, driven by its aspiration to be recognized as a nuclear weapons state. Consequently, North Korea rebuffed numerous diplomatic overtures from the Biden administration, as denuclearization is simply off the table.

South Korea’s policy of denuclearization is also at odds with Kim Jong Un’s Byungjin policy, which aims to achieve simultaneous economic development and nuclear weapons advancement. Domestically, nuclear weapons are framed as Kim’s achievement under the Byungjin policy, fulfilling the promise of a “rich nation and strong military.” These weapons are also closely tied to the regime’s legitimacy, serving as a source of national pride and elevating North Korea to the status of a nuclear-armed state. Hence, the Yoon government’s push for denuclearization is perceived by North Korea as a direct threat to its fundamental goal of security and regime preservation.

Third, North Korea’s growing cooperation with Russia has further reduced Pyongyang’s incentive to engage in diplomacy with Seoul. Unlike in 2017, when China and Russia joined the United States and South Korea in imposing heavy sanctions on North Korea after its ICBM and nuclear tests, the war in Ukraine provided North Korea with an opportunity to strengthen its strategic ties with Russia.

By supplying ammunition and missiles to support Russia’s war efforts, North Korea has reaped substantial rewards, including food, oil, and Russia's diplomatic backing at the United Nations. Russia has not only blocked any new sanctions against North Korea at the U.N. Security Council but also, in late March 2024, vetoed a resolution to renew the mandate of the U.N. Panel of Experts, in an apparent attempt to dismantle the sanctions regime on North Korea. These developments have alleviated some of the economic pressures on North Korea, in stark contrast to the period when Kim Jong Un was seeking sanctions relief during his meetings with Trump.

Yoon’s Unification Policy

As tensions escalated on the peninsula, the Yoon government faced growing pressure – internally and externally – to seek dialogue with Pyongyang. Within South Korea, opposition parties criticized Yoon’s approach as overly confrontational, while others accused it of being driven by bloc diplomacy. Public opinion increasingly favored dialogue and engagement over confrontation as a means to manage the situation. According to the latest KBS opinion poll, public opposition to the Yoon government’s North Korea policy rose from 55.8 percent in 2022, to 57.3 percent in 2023, to 60.1 percent as of August 2024.

In the United States, North Korean experts Robert Carlin and Siegfried Hacker warned of an increased risk of conflict on the peninsula, suggesting that “Kim Jong Un has made a strategic decision to go to war.” Although there is no concrete evidence indicating that North Korea is planning for war, these concerns were taken seriously in Washington, leading a White House official to hint at “interim steps” by the U.S. to reduce tensions and deescalate the situation.

In April 2024, the Yoon government experienced a significant setback in the South Korean general election. The ruling People Power Party (PPP) won 108 out of 300 seats, failing to capture a majority in the National Assembly. Yoon’s approval ratings remained low, hovering around 23 percent. This led to speculation that Yoon could enter a lame-duck period.

However, despite the election defeat and growing pressures, the Yoon government’s North Korea policy remained largely unchanged. For example, in early June, South Korea resumed loudspeaker broadcasts, a move that risked provoking a military response from Pyongyang, in response to North Korea’s provocative act of sending trash balloons into the South.

In reality, domestic politics had a limited impact on Yoon’s approach to North Korea, as the election results were primarily influenced by domestic issues such as inflation, unemployment, and housing shortages. Moreover, the post-election political landscape did not differ significantly from before, as Yoon had been navigating a National Assembly controlled by the main opposition Democratic Party since the start of his presidency.

Nonetheless, South Korea’s North Korea policy took a slight turn in August 2024, when Yoon unveiled his government’s new unification vision and, for the first time, called for dialogue. He proposed the creation of an “Inter-Korean Working Group” where the two Koreas could discuss various issues, ranging from threat reduction to economic cooperation to people-to-people and cultural exchanges, as well as disaster response.

At the same time, Yoon called for Korean unification based on the universal values of freedom and human rights, declaring, “The freedom we enjoy must be extended to the frozen kingdom of the North, where people are deprived of freedom and suffer from poverty and starvation.” His unification doctrine notably departs from previous policies by explicitly advocating for unification under liberal democracy, a stance that had previously been avoided due to its political sensitivity in North Korea.

Despite the potential that this new unification doctrine could provoke North Korea, it reflects Yoon’s consistent belief in the importance of universal values and underscores his administration’s continued emphasis on raising awareness and disseminating information within North Korea. This approach aligns with Yoon’s broader vision for South Korea’s unification strategy, which prioritizes the principles of freedom and human rights. Yoon’s doctrine represents a bold initiative and an embodiment of his commitment to these values, signaling a clear policy continuity in his administration's approach to the North.

Conclusion

The prospect for a thaw or dialogue between the two Koreas appears bleak. Recent developments show there is a significant misalignment of political interests. On one hand, there is a fundamental clash between South Korea’s push for denuclearization and Kim Jong Un’s Byungjin policy, which ties nuclear development to the regime’s legitimacy. On the other hand, the parallel between North Korea's abandonment of its unification policy and Yoon’s new unification approach suggests that the clash of values, ideologies, and systems will become a central source of conflict between the two Koreas.

Yoon’s new unification doctrine, rooted in universal values, represents a novel approach to South Korea’s unification policy. However, it is likely to be perceived by Kim as a strategy of “unification by absorption” or a push for the “collapse of the DPRK regime”— the very fears that have driven North Korea to distance itself from the South. The interplay of these two factors will make it challenging to break the current impasse.