South Korea urges Trump to act as peacemaker with North Korea as tensions persist
Seoul asks the U.S. president to lead diplomacy toward Pyongyang; Trump signals willingness to engage, while strikes at diplomacy continue amid regional security concerns
South Korea's foreign ministry says President Lee Jae Myung has asked President Donald Trump to serve as a peacemaker who can bring North Korea to talks aimed at reducing military tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said Trump welcomed the request and expressed a willingness to be engaged with North Korea again. There was no immediate confirmation from the White House.
Cho described Lee's outreach in an interview with The Associated Press, saying the president does not want to sit in the driver's seat but wants Trump to take the lead and use his influence to pull Pyongyang back to dialogue. The foreign minister recalled that Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met three times after North Korea accelerated its nuclear program, with summits in Singapore in 2018 and in Hanoi in 2019, and a third encounter at the inter-Korean border that year that failed to salvage diplomacy. Kim has since shunned diplomacy with the United States and South Korea.
Trump is expected to visit South Korea next month for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, which has prompted media speculation about a possible meeting with Kim at the border. Kim, for his part, has said he still has “good memories” of Trump but urged the United States to drop its precondition that the North surrender its nuclear arms as a prerequisite for resuming long-stalled diplomacy.
Cho said Lee’s government, which came to power after a snap election in June, wants to engage China and pursue stability in Northeast Asia. He described a constructive meeting with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi but stressed that there are lines Seoul will not cross, including China’s installation of something in the Yellow Sea that infringes on Seoul’s sovereignty and must be removed or faced with appropriate measures.
Cho travelled to Washington shortly after a massive raid by U.S. immigration officers at a Hyundai plant in southeast Georgia detained about 475 people, the majority of them South Koreans. He said Trump intervened to secure their return home, and that his talks with Secretary of State Marco Rubio yielded a silver lining by addressing visa access for South Korean workers.
The government’s outreach comes as South Korea’s military reported a warning-shot incident earlier Friday against a North Korean merchant ship that briefly crossed the disputed western sea boundary, underscoring ongoing tensions on the peninsula. Cho said the episode reinforces the case for a direct military hotline to reduce miscalculation and maintain channels for dialogue, and affirmed denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula remains the imperative.