Lee says Trump open to phased North Korea nuclear deal

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said Donald Trump was open to a phased approach to North Korea’s nuclear program, a sign that Washington may be willing to move back toward incremental diplomacy after years of all-or-nothing rhetoric. Lee described a short-term goal of freezing North Korea’s nuclear and missile activity while keeping denuclearization as a longer-range objective.

The immediate tradeoff Lee outlined was narrow but concrete: stop North Korea from producing more nuclear material, transferring weapons or materials overseas, and advancing intercontinental ballistic missile technology. That would amount to a bid to slow the program first, rather than demand instant disarmament from a state that already has a meaningful arsenal.

Lee argued that sanctions and pressure alone have not solved the problem. He said North Korea is still producing enough fissile material to make roughly 10 to 20 nuclear weapons a year, while its ICBM program is nearing the final stage, including re-entry capability. He also pointed to growing military cooperation between North Korea and Russia, saying it has blunted the effect of sanctions tied to the war in Ukraine.

That context helps explain why a phased deal is drawing attention now. A first-step arrangement could give each side something it can sell at home: Pyongyang would be asked to halt the most destabilizing parts of its program, while Washington and Seoul could consider limited, reversible sanctions relief or a new channel for dialogue if the freeze holds. The logic is familiar. Trump met Kim Jong Un three times in his first term, but the 2019 Hanoi summit collapsed over the pace of sanctions relief and denuclearization steps.

The proposal Lee described would be a reset from that failure, with smaller, verifiable concessions replacing the demand for an immediate grand bargain. For U.S. allies, that would matter as much as the talks themselves. South Korea would need close coordination with Washington on how to verify any freeze, and Japan would be watching for signs that missile and nuclear restraints are being enforced rather than merely promised.

If the approach gains traction, it could reopen a diplomatic track long stalled by distrust and deadline-driven summitry. It would also test whether Trump, Lee and their allies can turn a highly dangerous nuclear standoff into a sequence of partial, enforceable steps rather than another collapse over the price of compromise.