The speeches of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung at the United Nations General Assembly on September 23 and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un at the Supreme People’s Assembly on September 21 reveal a profound and unbridgeable gulf that continues to define the Korean Peninsula. Both leaders invoked the language of peace, but their visions proved not only divergent but fundamentally irreconcilable.
Lee Jae-myung’s Vision: END as a Pathway
Lee’s remarks in New York projected cautious optimism and principled pragmatism. He presented what he called “a new journey toward a Korean Peninsula of peaceful coexistence and joint prosperity.” This framework was grounded in three assurances meant to reassure Pyongyang: “The Republic of Korea will respect the other side’s system, will not pursue any form of absorption-based unification, and has no intention of hostile acts.”
The initiative’s essence was captured in the acronym END: Exchange, Normalization, Denuclearization. According to Lee, lasting peace would require building trust step by step. On the nuclear issue, he laid out a phased roadmap: “suspension of nuclear and missile capability advancement,” then nuclear reduction, and finally dismantlement.
To give the plan credibility, Lee pledged external support: “We will actively support and cooperate with efforts to normalize relations between North Korea and the international community, including the United States.” His message was clear – denuclearization should not be seen as unilateral surrender but as part of a structured bargain tied to normalization.
Kim Jong Un’s Rebuttal: Absolute Rejection
Yet even before Lee spoke, North Korea had already rejected his idea. Kim’s speech at the Supreme People’s Assembly was categorical and scornful. He ridiculed the phased approach Lee promoted: “Recently they came up with the idea of ‘phased denuclearization,’ which has led to the destroying with their own hands of the justification and foundations for negotiation with us.”
Kim dismissed the proposal as a recycled failure: the “so-called ‘suspension-reduction-denuclearization,’ is nothing other than a copy from the ‘workbook’ of his predecessors who dreamed of disarming us.” For Kim, dismantling his nuclear arsenal was not a point for negotiation but a betrayal of North Korea’s sovereign survival strategy.
Kim rejected outright the sanctions-for-denuclearization bargain: “For what should we turn to ‘denuclearization’? To avoid sanctions? Never. Never ever. I say ‘denuclearization’ is the last, last thing to expect from us.”
Whereas Lee’s END initiative assumed Pyongyang’s willingness to pursue gradual disarmament, Kim dismissed the very premise.
Nuclear Recognition, Not Denuclearization
Yet Kim’s stance was not total isolationism. He signaled conditional openness to dialogue, but on radically different terms than those offered by Lee. Instead of denuclearization, he suggested arms control – premised on recognition of North Korea as a legitimate nuclear state.
Kim’s olive branch was directed not to Seoul but to Washington, and specifically to U.S. President Donald Trump: “If the United States, freeing itself from its absurd pursuit of other’s denuclearization and recognizing the reality, wants genuine peaceful coexistence with us, there is no reason for us not to come face to face with it. Personally, I still have a good memory of the current US President Trump.”
By invoking nostalgia toward Trump while excluding Seoul, Kim underscored his calculation: North Korea seeks bilateral engagement with Washington, bypassing South Korea entirely. As he put it: “We have no reason to sit together with it [South Korea] and will do nothing together with it. I make clear that we will not deal with it at all.”
This statement undercut the very foundation of Lee’s END initiative. For Pyongyang, coexistence with Seoul is not a path to peace but a conceptual impossibility. Kim stressed: “The reunification of the two entities, which have become completely heterogeneous and mutually exclusive, can never be achieved unless one of them ceases to exist.”
He went further, accusing Seoul of duplicity:
The recently formed Lee Jae Myung government of [South Korea] is advocating a ‘line of compromise’ with us, talking about ‘improvement of relations’ and ‘peace,’ in a bid to make a distinction between it and its preceding governments. But nothing has changed substantially. In view of its wild ambition for ‘unification by absorption,’ it puts in the shade its preceding vicious “conservative” regimes, which set the anti-[North Korea] policy as a state policy.
Thus, Lee’s premise of mutual respect collided with Kim’s view that difference itself is intolerable.
The Immutable Nuclear Line
Kim’s rejectionism extended beyond rhetoric. On September 26, only days after his Assembly speech, he convened a high-level meeting with scientists and technicians from the nuclear weapons institute. The participants and venue made priorities clear. According to state media, Kim guided an “important consultative meeting on nuclear material production and nuclear weapons manufacturing.”
He reviewed progress on the “2025 capacity expansion plan for the nuclear material production sector,” expressing satisfaction that “thanks to the thorough implementation of two major tasks set forth by the [Workers’] Party’s new strategic line … the key links in enhancing the nation’s nuclear capability had been completely solved.”
The signal was blunt: North Korea is not merely sustaining its nuclear program but accelerating it. Kim declared that “steadily growing nuclear technological strength and enhanced capabilities of the country” provide both “a reliable guarantee for the struggle of our people, the victorious advance of our cause, and the security of our future.”
Nuclear Force as the Guarantee of Peace
In both his Assembly address and subsequent inspection, Kim reiterated a consistent logic: peace is guaranteed not through dialogue but through strength. He insisted that “the logic of maintaining peace and ensuring security by force – centered on strong deterrence, that is, nuclear force – is our immutable position.”
For him, nuclear weapons are not bargaining chips but the foundation of survival: “Continuing to advance the nation’s nuclear response posture is the top-priority task essential under the current security environment of the Republic, the most accurate choice for the present and the future of the state, and an unchangeable duty that we must uphold.”
He reinforced this doctrinal line: “We must constantly sharpen and modernize the nuclear shield and sword that reliably guarantee the sovereignty, security, interests, and right to development of the state.”
Kim pledged state support for the sector: “The Party and the state will provide and prioritize all possibilities and conditions necessary for the sustainable development of the nuclear technology sector.” He urged scientists to internalize the Workers’ Party’s line: “All nuclear technology experts must deeply recognize the essence of the Party’s line on strengthening nuclear capabilities.”
He even linked nuclear achievements to political milestones, calling on scientists to “greet the 9th Congress of the Party with outstanding research results and brilliant achievements in production.” His directive was clear: North Korea must “ceaselessly advance the nation’s self-defensive nuclear capabilities.”
The “END” at the Beginning
The contrast between Lee and Kim could not be sharper. Lee offers coexistence, gradualism, and phased denuclearization. Kim rejects dialogue, insisting on nuclear expansion and the doctrine of deterrence. Lee’s END – Exchange, Normalization, Denuclearization – is designed to open doors. Kim’s categorical assertion that “denuclearization is absolutely impossible for us” slams those doors shut.
This divergence crystallizes the paradox facing the peninsula: Seoul sees coexistence as the path to peace, while Pyongyang sees coexistence as the obstacle to peace. For Lee, END embodies hope; for Kim, it marks an illusion.
The back-to-back speeches and subsequent nuclear inspection leave little doubt about North Korea’s trajectory. Kim’s categorical rejection of denuclearization, his accusations of Seoul’s hidden ambitions, and his acceleration of nuclear programs converge on a single point: the END initiative faces its own “end” before it has even begun.
Lee sought to revive dialogue with assurances of respect, restraint, and coexistence. Yet Kim’s words underscored a diametrically opposed worldview: peace is guaranteed by nuclear force, security through deterrence, and eventual unification only through the disappearance of the other.
The gulf remains unbridgeable. For policymakers in Seoul and beyond, the conclusion is sobering: there is, as yet, no “END” in sight. As Kim himself declared, “denuclearization is absolutely impossible for us … not now and not ever.”
Hopes of building peace under the new Lee administration have already been dashed. It is time to return to the drawing board and craft a fresh policy approach capable of drawing the North Korean leadership back to the negotiation table. Persisting with the current framework – tying denuclearization to normalization – will only prove a futile exercise. The sooner the Lee administration recognizes this reality, the better it will be for the Korean Peninsula and the stability of the wider region.