High level diplomacy with North Korea might be coming back from the dead.

Japan’s prime minister Fumio Kishida has clearly indicated his intention to meet with Kim Jong Un, while North Korea, via statements by Kim’s sister, has gone back and forth on its receptivity to a summit. A Japan-North Korea summit is therefore uncertain, but it is worth thinking about what a meeting could mean in the current landscape of northeast Asian peace and security.

Simply put, while a Japan-North Korea summit is unlikely to produce major steps toward a more stable region, it is worth attempting because the costs of failure are low. Additionally, concerns about a Japan-North Korea summit creating a wedge between Japan, South Korea, and the United States are overblown and not a valid reason to oppose a potential meeting.  

The Benefit of Rock Bottom

It is important to have reasonable expectations about what a potential Kishida-Kim meeting could accomplish. Diplomacy with North Korea is at rock bottom, which is a “bad news, good news” situation for Japan. The bad news is that a summit will likely not result in any big wins for Japan, but the good news is that the regional security environment probably will not deteriorate if the summit fails or does not happen in the first place.

In other words, because things are already so bad, a summit’s potential benefits, despite being difficult to achieve, outweigh the essentially nil costs of failure.

North Korea has placed itself into an extended period of relative diplomatic isolation since Kim’s June 2019 trip to the DMZ for an impromptu meeting with then-presidents Donald Trump and Moon Jae-in. Since then, Kim has only made one foreign trip, a September 2023 summit with Vladimir Putin that resulted in greater North Korean military support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. North Korea has also conducted high-level diplomatic meetings with China recently, but not a leader-to-leader meeting.

The United States and South Korea have indicated their willingness to negotiate with North Korea, but under the current Biden and Yoon Suk-yeol administrations there has been much more emphasis on deepening military cooperation to better deter North Korea. For its part, Pyongyang has rejected calls for high-level diplomacy and has focused its efforts on expanding its nuclear arsenal. Relations between North Korea, South Korea, and the United States have deteriorated so far that there is growing concern among some experts that North Korea has already made a strategic decision to go to war.

This is a very hostile environment for a Japan-North Korea summit, but taking a moonshot at diplomacy is a good idea for two reasons. First, while Pyongyang’s reaction to Kishida’s overtures have been inconsistent, North Korea’s leadership is at least somewhat receptive to the idea, a far cry from its hostile reaction to US and South Korean statements. Second, even if Japan’s efforts fail, they will not make the current situation any worse.

The Overblown Wedge Strategy

One prominent argument against a potential Japan-North Korea summit is that it risks driving a wedge between Japan, South Korea, and the United States that could undermine recent progress on trilateral cooperation. Indeed, concerns about North Korea identifying and exploiting wedges are perennial whenever there is high-level diplomacy with Pyongyang.

Wedge fears are a bad reason to oppose Japan’s attempts to talk with North Korea.

While Tokyo may not perfectly see eye-to-eye with Washington and Seoul on every issue, its core security interests are much more closely aligned with the US and South Korea. The US-Japan alliance is also critical to Tokyo’s overall national security. Japan is therefore highly unlikely to take actions or make concessions to North Korea that risk its relationship with Washington.

In terms of the trilateral US-Japan-South Korea relationship, a potential wedge may be more likely given the newness of trilateral cooperation. However, history indicates that wedge issues in trilateral cooperation are more likely to come from domestic politics rather than Japan’s diplomatic outreach to North Korea.

Indeed, if Kishida’s overtures to Kim successfully buoy his dismal approval rating, then a summit would buttress trilateral cooperation by improving Kishida’s prospects for staying in power, allowing more time for cooperative efforts to take root before facing the potential stress of new administrations.  

Conclusion

The United States should welcome the prospect of a Japan-North Korea summit. The current state of play on the peninsula is already in such a bad place that any diplomatic overture, even one with a low chance of success, has more potential upside than downside. Hopefully Biden will convey a supportive message to Kishida on this issue when the two meet in Washington on April 10. 

About the Author

Eric Gomez is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

Image Credit: Creative Commons.