Republic of Korea (ROK) President Lee Jae-myung warned of the risk of accidental clashes with North Korea, which has cut off all communication with Seoul.
Lee has sought to ease tensions since assuming office in June 2025, including offering discussions with North Korea without preconditions. Pyongyang has not responded to Lee’s overtures.
“Inter-Korean relations have, regrettably, turned very hostile and confrontational,” he said in late November 2025.
“There is not even the most basic level of trust, and North Korea is making extremely extreme statements and taking extremely extreme actions,” Lee said, noting that Pyongyang installed triple layers of barbed-wire fences along the border, something not done since the armistice that ended Korean War fighting in 1953.
“We have now reached a situation where we do not know when an accidental clash may occur,” he said. “All lines of connection have been cut. They are refusing all dialogue and contact. It is a very dangerous state.”
Lee said Seoul would continue to pursue communications with North Korea, saying the ROK was “always open.”
“Why do we exchange and talk with every other country but not with North Korea? Now let us exchange. And we support the normalization of relations.”
Seoul proposed military talks with Pyongyang in mid-November to discuss delineating a boundary along the Military Demarcation Line to prevent border clashes. It was the first such offer in seven years.
There have been more than 10 border intrusions by North Korean soldiers in 2025, some prompting warning shots by ROK troops under an established protocol, according to the Reuters news service.
The nuclear-armed North Korean regime responded to the proposal by denouncing an agreement between Seoul and the United States to build conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines for South Korea.
The ROK and U.S. seek complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. The North Korean regime has refused, however, and dictator Kim Jong Un has deployed weapons and thousands of troops to aid Russia’s war against Ukraine in exchange for money, oil and technological assistance for Pyongyang’s illicit weapons of mass destruction programs.