South Korea's Lee Jae Myung Calls for Talks to Formally End Korean War, North Korea Has Not Responded

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung stood up Saturday at a ceremony marking 81 years since Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule and proposed something nobody in Pyongyang asked for: talks to formally end the Korean War.

"Let us put down our intentions to threaten each other and begin discussions to end the long-running war as the directly involved parties," Lee said, according to Reuters and multiple outlets including the Korea Times and Al Jazeera.

The Korean War never technically ended. The 1950-53 conflict, started by a North Korean attack, stopped with an armistice in 1953, not a peace treaty. Seventy-three years later, the two Koreas are still, on paper, at war. Lee wants to fix that with what he's calling a "peace regime."

He also floated something bigger: using those talks to slow down North Korea's nuclear weapons program. "Through this, it may also be possible to discuss effective measures to halt the advancement of North Korea's nuclear capabilities," Lee said, per the South China Morning Post and Channel News Asia.

Kim Jong Un isn't picking up the phone

The problem is immediate. Lee has been making these offers since he took office in June 2025. North Korea has ignored every single one.

Kim Jong Un scrapped Pyongyang's old reunification policy. He's called South Korea its most hostile state. He's ordered stronger frontline defenses, according to the Guardian. That's not the posture of a regime looking to sit down and talk peace.

Instead, Kim is getting cozier with Vladimir Putin. Analysts cited by Channel News Asia and Free Malaysia Today say North Korea is receiving financial support, food, energy and military technology from Moscow in exchange for troops and munitions supplied for Russia's war in Ukraine. Kim is reportedly expected to visit Russia later this year, possibly to negotiate more weapons deals.

North Korea has also declared itself an "irreversible" nuclear state, a stance it's held since the 2019 Hanoi summit between Kim and then-President Donald Trump collapsed over denuclearization terms and sanctions relief, Channel News Asia and Free Malaysia Today both note.

Drills, missiles, and a shrinking pressure campaign

Timing matters here. Lee's proposal landed the same week North Korea denounced the upcoming annual US-South Korean military exercises, an 11-day joint drill set to begin Monday, warning of "stronger deterrence measures," according to the Jakarta Post and SCMP.

Pyongyang has also fired two missiles in as many weeks, reportedly in response to Japan ramping up its own military posture, per Free Malaysia Today.

Colonel Ryan Donald, spokesman for the US and South Korean Combined Forces Command, told reporters this week that North Korea's involvement in the European war has changed the threat calculus on the peninsula. "They've taken those lessons they learned there and brought them back to North Korea," Donald said, adding "our training accounts for that threat."

Washington keeps roughly 28,500 troops in South Korea. That number hasn't moved. Whatever goodwill Lee is trying to build with Pyongyang, the US military posture on the ground says deterrence, not détente, remains the operating assumption.

There's also a real policy shift in play. In July, South Korea's unification minister said Seoul has essentially abandoned its old campaign of pressuring the North to dismantle its nuclear arsenal entirely, according to Channel News Asia and Free Malaysia Today. The new goal is just stopping expansion of the program, not reversing it. That's a lower bar than what past South Korean and US administrations demanded, and it's fair to ask whether that amounts to accepting a nuclear-armed North Korea as a permanent fact rather than a problem to be solved. Lee's government hasn't disputed the characterization. It's framed as pragmatism given the North's refusal to negotiate on the old terms.

Japan gets a softer line too

Lee also used the speech to address Japan, calling for "confronting the past while leaving open the future" and saying he hopes to start a new 60 years of peace and prosperity with Tokyo as a "close neighbor," according to the Guardian and the Korea Times.

That's notable given the history. Japan colonized Korea from 1910 to 1945, and Liberation Day exists specifically to mark the end of that occupation. Lee choosing conciliation over grievance on the anniversary itself is a deliberate signal, not an afterthought.

None of the outlets covering this, including Al Jazeera, the Times of India, and the Jakarta Post, report any response yet from Pyongyang to Saturday's proposal. Given North Korea's track record over the past 14 months, that silence is the most predictable outcome in this entire story. The open question isn't whether Lee means what he says. It's whether Kim Jong Un, sitting on a growing nuclear arsenal and a new patron in Moscow, has any actual incentive to answer.