South Korea Must Build a Public Participation System in Its Foreign Policy

 

*On December 16, 2025, South Korean civil society organizations, including the Citizens’ Peace Forum, held a press conference in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Seoul, opposing the ‘ROK–U.S. North Korea Policy Coordination Consultative Body.’ ⓒ Citizens’ Peace Forum

Il Young Jeong

Senior Research Fellow_Institute of Social Science_Sogang University

“Ah… the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is making the Korean Peninsula issue even more complicated.”

That was my first reaction upon reading the news that South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was pushing for high-level talks with the United States to coordinate policy toward North Korea. In the end, the Ministry of Unification—the government body primarily responsible for North Korea policy—announced it would not participate in the talks, citing the Foreign Ministry’s overreach. Former unification ministers and civil society organizations also opposed the launch of the consultative body, warning that it would become a second “ROK–U.S. Working Group. 

This column revisits the problems surrounding the Foreign Ministry’s involvement in North Korea policy and argues for the need to establish a system of public participation in South Korea’s foreign policymaking.

 

Why the Foreign Ministry’s Involvement in North Korea Policy Cannot Be Dismissed as a Mere Incident

Some may ask, “What’s the problem with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs discussing North Korea policy with the United States?” But for someone who has watched conservative administrations systematically marginalize the Ministry of Unification over the years, this was nothing short of shocking. It read as a declaration by a progressive government’s Foreign Ministry: “North Korea policy is now our business too.”

Under South Korea’s Government Organization Act, North Korea policy clearly falls under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Unification. Why, then, has the Foreign Ministry stepped forward to assert its role in this domain?

Calls to abolish the Ministry of Unification have surfaced repeatedly under past conservative governments—during the Lee Myung-bark administration and again under the Yoon Suk-yeol administration. When the Yoon government failed to dismantle the ministry outright, it pursued a different strategy: transforming it into something more “Foreign Ministry–like.”

In 2023, President Yoon appointed an international politics professor as unification minister and a former Foreign Ministry official as vice minister. As a result, inter-Korean relations were stripped of their special character, and North Korea policy became trapped in the logic of international politics and diplomacy, lurching from one failure to another. The Ministry of Unification lost its identity and was reduced to a subordinate variable within foreign and security policy.

The recent ROK–U.S. meeting on “North Korea policy coordination” promoted by the Foreign Ministry can be seen as taking the Yoon administration’s worldview one step further—now under the Lee Jae-myung government’s Foreign Ministry. The idea that North Korea can simply be sealed in a black box and managed through the lenses of international relations and diplomacy has not disappeared; it has evolved and persisted.

Is North Korea really so unexceptional? At a time when Kim Jong Un himself insists on the concept of “two hostile states,” does the special nature of inter-Korean relations still exist at all? If the Lee Jae-myung administration cannot answer these questions convincingly, its North Korea policy will inevitably lose its way.

 

Why North Korea Is Exceptional—and Why Inter-Korean Relations Are Unique

North Korea is an exceptional political entity, one without precedent not only in modern history but arguably in human history itself. While claiming to be socialist, it has maintained a three-generation hereditary succession and constructed a system of social control unmatched anywhere else on the planet. Even today, no publication, video, performance, or public gathering in North Korea is possible without the approval of the Workers’ Party of Korea. Has there ever been another state like this?

According to data from Statistics Korea, the famine that struck North Korea in the mid-1990s resulted in a population loss of more than 600,000 people. With the state food distribution system collapsing, deaths from starvation occurred and mass defections followed. Under such circumstances, common sense would suggest widespread resistance from the population. Yet no large-scale unrest was ever confirmed.

How was North Korea able to construct and maintain such a political system? The answer lies in a historical event: the Korean War. In short, the Korean War produced the “exception” that is the North Korean system—and that war has never truly ended. It continues under an armistice regime, which is precisely why inter-Korean relations remain unique.

In this context, Kim Jong Un has asserted the concept of “two hostile states,” denying the special nature of relations between North and South Korea. But even if Kim seeks to reject that uniqueness, it is not so easy to erase the legacy of unification left by previous North Korean leaders. Such a shift is also likely to cause significant confusion among North Korean residents. Just as South Korea’s Constitution explicitly enshrines unification, the instructions and legacies of past leaders in North Korea remain powerful.

The characteristics of North Korea’s political system—ones that cannot be generalized through the lens of international politics—and the unique nature of inter-Korean relations derived from the ongoing armistice regime continue to justify the very existence of the Ministry of Unification.

 

In a Government of People’s Sovereignty, Is the Foreign Ministry an Exception?

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs initially announced the meeting as a “high-level ROK–U.S. consultation on coordinating North Korea policy.” When the Ministry of Unification and civil society groups raised objections, the Foreign Ministry renamed it the “follow-up consultation to the ROK–U.S. summit joint fact sheet” and proceeded with the meeting on December 16. Beyond the problems in the ad hoc handling of ROK–U.S. foreign policy coordination, it is also difficult to understand why a vice-minister–level official—the head of the Foreign Ministry’s Office of Strategic Intelligence—conducted the meeting with the acting U.S. ambassador to Korea as his counterpart. The meeting reportedly sparked heated debate even within the National Security Council (NSC).

This inevitably raises a fundamental question: Is the Foreign Ministry exempt in a government founded on people’s sovereignty? The Lee Jae-myung administration has declared itself a government of popular sovereignty, emphasizing direct public participation in policymaking. This approach reflects a painful reckoning with the Yoon Suk-yeol administration’s unilateral and exclusionary policy decisions, which culminated in the December 3 martial law crisis and the ensuing insurrection. Foreign policy, too, cannot be an exception.

In response, the Ministry of Unification has declared a “people’s sovereignty–based North Korea policy” and is implementing follow-up measures, including the establishment of a public listening group and a social dialogue mechanism. What, then, is the Foreign Ministry doing? No concrete effort has been presented to guarantee the participation of the sovereign people in the Lee Jae-myung administration’s foreign policy. The existing advisory system—centered largely on experts—remains unchanged.

 

A Public Participation System Must Be Established in Foreign Policy

Let me ask again, Is the Foreign Ministry exempt in a government of people’s sovereignty? There is a real concern that, citing the need for diplomatic expertise, the Foreign Ministry may be rejecting the idea of a foreign policy rooted in popular sovereignty. Exclusive control of policymaking by expert groups not only blocks public participation but also reduces democratic decision-making to a mere formal procedure.

The Foreign Ministry, too, cannot be an exception in the Lee Jae-myung administration’s vision of a “government of the people.” The government must now engage civil society in discussions on how to establish effective mechanisms for public participation in foreign policy.

*IL-Young Jeong is a Senior Research Fellow at Sogang University in Seoul. His key research interests include North Korea's social control system, inter-Korean relations, and peace on the Korean Peninsula.