South Korea's leader urges nuclear freeze, eased sanctions on North

Washington should seek a freeze, rather than the immediate elimination, of North Korea's nuclear programme and offer sanctions relief in return, South Korea's leader said in a New York Times interview.

President Lee Jae Myung has reversed the stance of his hawkish predecessor Yoon Suk Yeol since taking power in June 2025, offering nuclear-armed Pyongyang talks without preconditions.

North Korea's leadership has yet to respond to any of his offers.

Despite long-running UN sanctions, North Korea has enshrined its status as a nuclear-armed state in law, with its leaders repeatedly declaring its atomic arsenal permanent and irreversible.

At the same time, Pyongyang has secured critical backing from Russia alongside its traditional ally China, leaving it with less to gain from renewed diplomacy with US President Donald Trump.

"I believe there is significant value in a trade-off between sanctions -- which are not particularly effective anyway -- and a stop to the development of additional nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missile technology," Lee was quoted as saying in an interview published Monday.

"Aiming for denuclearisation under the current circumstances," Lee told the US paper, "guarantees that nothing will be accomplished."

The South Korean president previously said that freezing Pyongyang's nuclear capabilities at current levels by suspending new production and preventing nuclear materials being imported would itself be "a gain".

Critics say such an approach risks tacitly accepting North Korea as a nuclear-armed state while allowing Pyongyang to secure sanctions relief without ultimately giving up its arsenal.

Trump met Kim three times during his first term, but their diplomacy ultimately stalled after their 2019 summit in Hanoi failed to produce an agreement on sanctions relief and what Pyongyang would offer in return for denuclearisation.