Aletho News

The Summit That Wasn’t

By Konstantin Asmolov – New Eastern Outlook – November 12, 2025

On October 29-30, 2025, US President Donald Trump visited the Republic of Korea as part of his tour of Asia and limited participation in the APEC summit. Several significant meetings took place during this event, but we shall discuss the one that did not happen.

Possible meeting between Trump and Kim?

When it became clear that Trump was going to South Korea, some Western and especially South Korean experts began actively promoting the idea that it would be good if Trump met with Kim Jong Un during the visit. Such reflections were based both on Kim’s statement that “If the United States abandons its empty obsession with denuclearization and hopes for sincere peaceful coexistence with North Korea based on the acceptance of reality, we have no reason not to sit down at the negotiating table with the United States” and on the experience of 2019, when during Trump’s visit to the Republic of Korea, he met Kim at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). In addition, as early as September 30, 2025, the White House announced that Donald Trump remains open to talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “without any preconditions”.

The US president himself occasionally hints at this. On October 27, Donald Trump stated: “I’d love to meet with him. If he’d like to meet,” although on the same day a Rodong Sinmun editorial pointed out that “it is equivalent to self-destruction to try to move forward or progress with the help of others”.

The South Korean side was the most active in this matter. A Trump-Kim summit held on South Korean territory could at least be counted as the merit of South Korea, which “organized the platform.” Although on October 20 the South Korean presidential administration claimed that it did not know anything about preparations for a US-North Korean summit, a number of its representatives, especially Minister of Reunification Chung Dong-young, repeatedly urged the leaders of North Korea and the United States not to miss a great opportunity for dialogue. Conservatives and their media expressed concern about the same issue: “Trump’s visit to Korea must not mean recognition of North Korea’s nuclear status”.

On October 23, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung personally expressed hope that during his upcoming trip to Asia, Donald Trump would act as a peacemaker and that the leaders of the United States and South Korea would be able to engage in dialogue.

Even then, North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui defiantly departed for a visit to Russia and Belarus, during which she was received by President Putin. Some South Korean experts and officials, including Minister Chung, continued to speculate about the possibility of a meeting. “I sincerely hope that the negotiations left unfinished during the meeting between the leaders of the United States and North Korea can resume,” stated Chung. National Security Adviser Wi Sung Lac also emphasized readiness for any scenarios.

On October 27, deputy head of the South Korean Office of National Security Oh Hyun-joo said that although a meeting between Trump and Kim was “extremely unlikely,” Seoul is ready to organize a venue.

Nevertheless, on October 29, 2025, Trump did make a statement that this time he could not agree on a schedule with Kim Jong Un for a meeting but could soon return to Asia to meet with the North Korean leader. After that, Wi Sung Lac stated that the conditions for DPRK-US negotiations had not yet matured, and a South Korean national intelligence representative noted that the US-North Korean summit would be possible after South Korea and the US hold joint exercises in March next year.

No, they can’t! (Yet)

It is very interesting when politicians or experts first form an image of an event in their head and then begin to express disappointment that it did not happen in reality. Therefore, the author will have to repeat some ideas about why—if such a meeting ever takes place (the probability is low)—it will be more ceremonial in nature. Both Trump and Kim are pragmatists, and they have no desire to meet purely for the opportunity to stand next to one another and smile for the journalists.

To begin with, negotiations should have an agenda. Kim Jong Un noted at the session of the Supreme People’s Assembly that the DPRK is not against negotiations with the United States if they move away from the topic of denuclearization. Meanwhile, the entire agenda of the American side still boils down to the question of whether it is possible to somehow arrange the nuclear disarmament of the DPRK, despite the fact that its nuclear status is included in its constitution. Thus, disarmament as seen by the Americans is possible only after regime change, or rather the loss of Pyongyang’s sovereignty, something Pyongyang, Beijing, and Moscow will not allow.

Thus, the United States lacks leverage over Pyongyang, and this applies to both the “carrot” and the “stick.” The DPRK’s military potential has grown significantly, and the comprehensive strategic partnership agreement with Russia has eliminated the possibility of using force to put pressure on the DPRK. It will also not be possible to increase sanctions pressure, because an attempt to impose UN sanctions that are mandatory for all countries will be blocked by Moscow and, perhaps, Beijing, and an increase in Russian and Chinese aid may be the answer to unilateral sanctions. Finally, in 2020-2023, when the DPRK went into “self-isolation,” for three years the country existed in conditions indistinguishable from a complete economic blockade, which showed that the DPRK has the opportunity to survive for a while even without external assistance in the event of an embargo.

As for the “carrot,” options such as various forms of assistance will not work, because everything that the United States could give to North Korea, the latter could receive from Russia or China. Therefore, in order to really involve the North in the dialogue, serious concessions will have to be made, e.g., easing the sanctions regime or replacing the denuclearization agenda with an arms control agenda, which in itself means the de facto recognition of the DPRK as a nuclear power. However, Trump will not be able to take such decisive steps for domestic political and reputational reasons. Western public opinion will perceive this as unacceptable concessions to a tyrannical regime, and even if Trump decides to do something similar, his entourage and the notorious “deep state” will not allow such a policy to fully materialize.

Lastly, there are issues related to Seoul. According to the modern North Korean doctrine, there are two hostile states on the Korean Peninsula, and although the South is no longer perceived as the territory of the DPRK temporarily occupied by American puppets, but as a separate Republic of Korea, Pyongyang does not want to have any dealings with it. Firstly, from the point of view of the North Korean leadership, the South is devoid of subjectivity and therefore cannot be negotiated with, and, secondly, since the Republic of Korea still considers the entire peninsula to be its territory—and this is written into the constitution—its goal is to absorb the DPRK, and the democrats or conservatives in power differ only in their methods to achieve this. Therefore, any attempt by the South Korean leadership to interfere in the US-North Korean negotiations in order to present itself as a mediator and score political points is more likely to reduce the likelihood of a US-North Korean summit than to increase it. Had the decision to organize a meeting between the leaders been made, they would have faced the very serious question of how to host a summit without the participation of the South Korean leader while in South Korea.

Therefore, from the very beginning, the author pointed out the extremely low probability of a summit between the leaders of the United States and the DPRK in South Korea, despite the fact that there is still a small chance of this meeting in the foreseeable future. One of the elements of US strategy in the confrontation with China is to try to weaken ties between China and its allies and ideally make the allies neutral or drag them into its camp.  With regard to the DPRK, this is, of course, a difficult task, but a number of US experts admit this possibility, exaggerating North Korean-Chinese contradictions and recalling how the DPRK maneuvered between Moscow and Beijing during the Cold War era. The Americans will keep trying, and we shall see what this will lead to over the next year.

Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, leading research fellow at the Centre for Korean Studies of the Institute of China and Modern Asia at the Russian Academy of Sciences

November 12, 2025 - Posted by aletho | Militarism | Korea, United States