US President Donald Trump has announced his eagerness to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un while in South Korea for the APEC summit. That implies a possible revival of US-North Korea talks, frozen since 2019. While some would dismiss such a move as appeasement, renewed US engagement with North Korea could benefit Taiwan’s security interests.
The long-standing stalemate between Washington and Pyongyang has allowed Beijing to entrench its dominance in the region, creating a myth that only China can “manage” Kim’s rogue nation. That dynamic has allowed Beijing to present itself as an indispensable power broker: extracting concessions from Washington, Seoul and Tokyo for a chance to engage with Pyongyang, while tightening the noose around Taiwan.
Should Washington reopen a direct channel with Pyongyang, Beijing’s influence monopoly would weaken, and so would its bargaining power. US-North Korea engagement would demonstrate that Washington can conduct diplomacy on its own terms.
The diplomatic leverage Beijing holds over North Korea creates operational risk. Every time Kim fires missiles, Washington, Seoul and Tokyo scramble surveillance aircraft, reposition missile defenses and pour intelligence assets into monitoring the provocations. The hours spent tracking North Korea are hours not spent watching Chinese maneuvers around Taiwan. That imbalance is precisely what Beijing counts on.
It also means that the US would face an impossible choice over how to allocate its resources if contingencies occur in both the Taiwan Strait and on the Korean Peninsula.
Even limited steps to make Pyongyang more predictable, such as through hotlines or humanitarian channels, would free up US attention and resources to strengthen deterrence in the Strait. Lower tensions on the Korean Peninsula would also give Seoul more strategic room to step up in a Taiwan contingency, reinforcing regional deterrence. Washington’s engagement with Pyongyang helps lower the risk of the US and its allies overextending themselves in the region.
Trump’s overture toward Kim should be seen as an expression of his trademark personality-driven diplomacy, perhaps with an eye on the Nobel Peace Prize. Even modest dialogue with Pyongyang would shrink Beijing’s leverage in regional diplomacy and bolster stability from the Korean Peninsula to the Taiwan Strait, a win for peace across northeast Asia.
Alan Jeong is a student at Georgetown University in Washington.
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