Sanctions as a Path to Peace: Could Phased Relief Break the North Korea Stalemate?

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has put an uncomfortable question back at the center of the North Korea debate: What if insisting on complete denuclearization before offering meaningful concessions is helping preserve the very stalemate that allows North Korea’s nuclear arsenal to grow?

Lee is urging the United States to consider easing sanctions in stages if North Korea agrees to freeze the further development of its nuclear weapons program. In interviews this week, he described a phased process beginning with stopping additional weapons development, followed by reductions and ultimately dismantlement, with political and economic incentives offered along the way. He has argued that pursuing immediate, complete denuclearization under present conditions risks producing no progress at all.

For the Peace Economy Project, the significance of this proposal goes beyond the Korean Peninsula. It raises a larger question about the role economic coercion plays in national security policy.

Sanctions are commonly treated as the peaceful alternative to military force. But they are still instruments of coercion. They attempt to alter another government’s behavior by imposing economic costs rather than military ones. Their effectiveness, therefore, should not be measured simply by how much economic pressure they create. The more important question is whether that pressure produces greater security.

In North Korea, that distinction matters.

Decades of sanctions and diplomatic isolation have not eliminated the country’s nuclear program. Negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang have repeatedly started and collapsed, while North Korea has continued advancing its nuclear and missile capabilities. The Council on Foreign Relations’ chronology of nuclear negotiations shows how attempts at freezes, inspections, normalization and denuclearization have repeatedly broken down over questions of sequencing, verification and reciprocal commitments.

The danger of continuing the stalemate is not theoretical. Lee has cited South Korean estimates suggesting that North Korea may now be capable of producing enough fissile material for roughly 10 to 20 additional nuclear weapons per year. Meanwhile, North Korea continues to test increasingly sophisticated missile systems. On September 20, it launched two short-range ballistic missiles from its eastern coast, and two days later state media described the system as a new hypersonic weapon. Independent experts continue to debate the precise capabilities of such systems, but the broader trajectory is clear: North Korea’s weapons programs have not remained frozen while diplomacy has stalled.

That leaves policymakers confronting an uncomfortable tradeoff.

A negotiated nuclear freeze would not constitute denuclearization. North Korea would still possess nuclear weapons. Yet a verifiable halt to the production of fissile material, new warheads or particular missile systems could prevent the threat from expanding while creating space for additional negotiations.

The central question, then, becomes not simply whether sanctions should remain or disappear, but how they might be used.

Sanctions as a Ladder Rather Than a Wall

Sanctions are most useful as bargaining leverage when governments are willing to exchange their removal for specific changes in behavior.

If sanctions become permanent regardless of what the targeted government does, their negotiating value diminishes. They become punishment rather than leverage.

A phased approach would operate differently.

A possible framework might look like this:

Freeze → relief → verification → reduction → additional relief → dismantlement.

Under such an arrangement, neither side would be required to make its largest concession first.

North Korea might initially agree to halt the production of fissile material at specified facilities or suspend certain categories of missile testing. In return, selected economic restrictions could be relaxed.

International inspectors could then verify compliance.

Additional reductions in weapons production, missile deployment or nuclear infrastructure could trigger additional relief. More substantial sanctions could remain until more substantial disarmament occurred.

Such an approach would not require trusting North Korea. In fact, a credible phased system would depend heavily on verification.

It would also have to include mechanisms for restoring restrictions if agreements were violated.

That is fundamentally different from simply lifting sanctions in the hope that political relations improve. It would treat economic policy as part of an arms-control mechanism.

What Should Sanctions Relief Buy?

A peace-economy approach also raises another important question: If sanctions are relaxed, what kinds of economic activity should be restored first?

The international sanctions regime against North Korea is broad. United Nations measures overseen by the Security Council’s 1718 Committee include restrictions involving weapons, financial activities and numerous categories of trade. At the same time, the sanctions framework contains humanitarian exemptions precisely because the international community recognizes that restrictions aimed at governments can also complicate assistance to civilians.

The United Nations maintains a formal process through which governments, international organizations and nongovernmental organizations can request exemptions for humanitarian assistance. As of May 22, 2026, the 1718 Committee reported approving 124 humanitarian exemption requests. Current or recent exemptions have included projects involving tuberculosis treatment, vaccine laboratories, clean water systems, agricultural equipment and food-security programs.

That existing structure suggests one possibility for phased relief.

Rather than beginning with unrestricted commercial access, early sanctions relief could prioritize civilian sectors that improve human welfare while providing relatively little support to military capabilities.

Agricultural equipment, public-health infrastructure, clean-water systems, medical supplies and carefully monitored development projects could potentially form part of an initial economic opening.

Later stages might permit broader trade, investment and financial integration if corresponding arms-control commitments were fulfilled.

Such an approach would attempt to separate the economic wellbeing of ordinary North Koreans from the weapons programs policymakers are trying to constrain.

It would also reflect a central principle of a peace economy: security policy should be judged not merely by the pressure it applies to adversaries, but by whether it reduces violence and improves human wellbeing.

The Problem of the Perfect Agreement

One of the greatest obstacles to arms-control negotiations is the temptation to compare an imperfect agreement with an ideal outcome rather than with the likely consequences of continued stalemate.

Complete, verified and irreversible denuclearization would remove the nuclear threat more comprehensively than a weapons freeze.

But that does not necessarily mean it is immediately achievable.

The relevant comparison is therefore not simply between a freeze and complete denuclearization. It is also between a freeze and continued weapons production.

If North Korea continues increasing its stockpile while negotiators wait for an agreement capable of eliminating the entire arsenal, the cost of future disarmament may rise each year.

This is the logic behind Lee’s phased proposal. South Korea’s president has argued for an approach that begins with stopping additional weapons development before moving toward reductions and eventual dismantlement.

There are legitimate objections.

A freeze could effectively acknowledge North Korea’s existing nuclear arsenal without guaranteeing eventual disarmament. Economic concessions could strengthen the government economically while leaving weapons intact. Verification could prove difficult. Restrictions lifted during negotiations might also be politically or economically difficult to restore.

Those risks should be taken seriously.

But the alternative carries risks as well.

Military exercises, sanctions and deterrence can constrain North Korean behavior, but they have not prevented the expansion of its nuclear capabilities. North Korea has also developed closer political and economic ties with Russia and China, potentially reducing the leverage Western sanctions once provided.

The result is a security dilemma in which every side can argue that its military preparations are defensive while interpreting the other side’s preparations as threatening.

That cycle is expensive.

It drives investment toward missiles, nuclear weapons, military exercises, missile-defense systems and other tools of deterrence while reducing the political space available for diplomatic experimentation.

A peace economy asks whether some portion of those resources and political attention could instead be used to construct incentives for reducing threats.

Measuring What Sanctions Actually Accomplish

Sanctions occupy a complicated position in peace policy.

They can provide governments with an alternative to military force. They can restrict access to weapons technology, constrain financing and create leverage for negotiations.

But sanctions are not an end in themselves.

They are a policy instrument.

Their success should therefore be evaluated according to the outcome they are supposed to produce.

If the objective of sanctions against North Korea is ultimately to reduce the nuclear danger, the relevant questions are straightforward:

Has the nuclear arsenal become smaller?

Has weapons production slowed?

Have missile tests decreased?

Has the risk of military confrontation declined?

Has diplomacy become easier?

If the answers remain largely negative, policymakers should be willing to examine alternative uses of economic leverage.

Phased sanctions relief is one such possibility.

It would not guarantee peace. It would not eliminate the enormous trust deficit between North Korea, South Korea and the United States. Nor would it resolve the difficult questions surrounding verification, proliferation and the future of North Korea’s existing arsenal.

But it would recognize something that arms-control agreements have long acknowledged: adversaries rarely resolve their deepest security conflicts in a single negotiation.

Sometimes peace is constructed through smaller reciprocal steps.

Stop producing weapons.

Verify the halt.

Provide an incentive.

Reduce the arsenal.

Verify again.

Provide another incentive.

Repeat.

The approach may appear less dramatic than demanding immediate denuclearization. But after years in which the diplomatic stalemate has coincided with continued weapons development, incremental progress deserves serious examination.

The ultimate question is therefore not whether sanctions are tough enough.

It is whether they are accomplishing their purpose.

If economic pressure is intended to reduce the nuclear threat, then its success should not be measured by how much hardship it imposes.

It should be measured by how many weapons it helps remove.

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