Lee Proposes Four-Party Framework for Peninsula Peace

President Lee Jae-myung has proposed a four-party dialogue among South Korea, North Korea, the United States and China as a route toward a formal peace system on the Korean Peninsula. In his UN General Assembly address in New York, Lee said renewed US-North Korea talks should develop into dialogue among the parties concerned with ending the war and replacing the armistice structure.

The proposal gives clearer membership to an idea Lee had previously described as talks among relevant parties. Seoul's intended sequence begins with restarting the long-suspended Washington-Pyongyang channel, then broadening the process to include the two Koreas and China. Lee presented the framework as a way to normalize relationships and support stability and cooperation in Northeast Asia.

The speech also retained a nuclear objective. Lee referred to a process moving from a halt, to reduction, and ultimately to denuclearization. That formulation treats risk reduction as a staged effort and places it alongside peace-system negotiations, rather than making a final settlement the first available step.

A framework still waiting for counterparts

Each participant would enter with different interests and leverage. The two Koreas remain the direct parties to division, the United States is South Korea's treaty ally and a central counterpart in nuclear negotiations, and China is North Korea's largest diplomatic and economic partner. Agreement on a meeting format would therefore be only an opening condition.

The proposal is now a declared South Korean foreign-policy position, but the evidence contains no acceptance from the other three governments. Its progress can be measured through official responses, working-level contacts and any concrete offer to resume US-North Korea dialogue. Without those signals, the UN speech establishes Seoul's preferred architecture rather than an active negotiation.