South Korean President Lee Jae-myung announced his plan to reduce tensions on the Korean Peninsula with a new acronym last week — E.N.D., or “Exchange, Normalization and Denuclearization” — but there’s good reason to doubt his awkward English-language shorthand will appeal to Pyongyang.
Ignoring the fact that denuclearization looks like a pipe dream in 2025, the new acronym hardly strikes an optimistic note for inter-Korean affairs, carrying associations of despair and finality. Former President Kim Dae-jung’s “Sunshine Policy” did a better job of projecting hope, though even that name suggested to the DPRK that the South just wanted to lull them out of their suspicions.
South Korean President Lee Jae-myung announced his plan to reduce tensions on the Korean Peninsula with a new acronym last week — E.N.D., or “Exchange, Normalization and Denuclearization” — but there’s good reason to doubt his awkward English-language shorthand will appeal to Pyongyang.
Ignoring the fact that denuclearization looks like a pipe dream in 2025, the new acronym hardly strikes an optimistic note for inter-Korean affairs, carrying associations of despair and finality. Former President Kim Dae-jung’s “Sunshine Policy” did a better job of projecting hope, though even that name suggested to the DPRK that the South just wanted to lull them out of their suspicions.
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