It’s Groundhog Day again in Seoul

In the 1993 film Groundhog Day, Bill Murray plays Phil Connors, a cynical TV weatherman trapped in a time loop, doomed to relive the same day—February 2nd—over and over again. At first, Phil exploits his situation for personal gain. Then he falls into despair. But only after confronting his flaws and changing his behavior does he finally escape the cycle. What begins as a comedy becomes a fable about transformation: real change doesn’t come from replaying the same script; it comes from breaking the script entirely.

South Korea’s North Korea policy feels eerily similar. Every few years, especially under progressive administrations, a new president takes office, declares a fresh start, and launches another round of summit diplomacy with the North. The setting changes—Pyongyang, Panmunjom, Singapore—but the script is always the same: early gestures of goodwill, grand promises, photo ops, and then… collapse. The loop resets.

Now, with the election of President Lee Jae-myung, the country stands once again on the edge of a familiar cliff, peering down into another cycle of performative engagement. The question is whether Lee will break the loop or become its next prisoner.

From Kim Dae-jung to Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s progressive leaders have embraced the belief that engagement—dialogue, economic cooperation, and summitry—can transform inter-Korean relations. And for a while, that belief seemed to bear fruit. The first inter-Korean summit in 2000 won Kim a Nobel Peace Prize. Roh Moo-hyun continued the “Sunshine Policy,” and Moon Jae-in took it to new theatrical heights with three summits with Kim Jong Un in 2018. There were handshakes at the DMZ, pledges of peace, and choreographed expressions of unity.

And yet, all of it unraveled.

By 2019, the momentum from Moon’s diplomacy had fizzled. The Hanoi summit between Kim and Trump collapsed without a deal. North Korea resumed missile tests. Joint economic projects stalled. The vision of peace evaporated. Moon left office with none of the fundamental issues resolved: not denuclearization, not normalization, not even basic communication channels.

This isn’t to say these efforts were made in bad faith. But like Phil Connors repeatedly trying to charm his way out of the loop, successive administrations have approached North Korea with the same tools, expecting a different result. They tweak the language, adjust the timeline, add new intermediaries—but the architecture remains the same. Symbolism substitutes for substance. Hope stands in for strategy.

President Lee Jae-myung now signals he may do the same. His early gestures echo past patterns: talk of reopening dialogue, resuming humanitarian cooperation, and halting loudspeaker broadcasts along the border. His advisers speak of finding “creative solutions” to engage Pyongyang while balancing relations with the U.S. and China. Yet creative solutions quickly start to look like recycled scripts. A “reset” becomes a retread. And already, the signs are clear that North Korea isn’t playing along.

In 2024, Pyongyang declared South Korea a hostile state in its constitution, explicitly renouncing the long-standing goal of peaceful reunification. It has deepened military ties with Russia, stepped up its missile tests, and closed virtually every channel of inter-Korean communication. It does not want a summit. It wants leverage.

Summit diplomacy, at this stage, is no longer about building peace—it’s about optics. Kim Jong Un uses summits to extract concessions and legitimacy. South Korean presidents use them to project statesmanship and placate domestic audiences. But without enforceable agreements or mutual accountability, these summits become expensive photo shoots—acts of political theater with no enduring impact.

And yet, Lee’s administration seems drawn to the same trap.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Groundhog Day wasn’t just about repetition—it was about the necessity of internal change. Phil Connors only escapes the loop when he stops manipulating others and starts improving himself. He learns piano. He reads poetry. He saves a man’s life. The loop breaks not because the day changes, but because he does.

South Korea’s North Korea policy needs the same reckoning. If the Lee administration wants to avoid becoming yet another rerun, it must stop mistaking motion for progress. Instead of racing toward another summit, it should:

First, anchor diplomacy in measurable steps. A summit should be the culmination of sustained, reciprocal progress—not its starting point. That means reestablishing hotlines, verifying compliance on missile moratoriums, and restoring small-scale humanitarian projects first.

Second, maintain a balance between engagement and deterrence. Lee has rightly indicated that he will not undo the U.S.–ROK–Japan security cooperation that his predecessor Yoon Suk-yeol helped strengthen. That’s essential. Dialogue without credibility is just wishful thinking. North Korea must understand that engagement doesn’t preclude pressure.

Third, confront the new strategic reality. North Korea’s behavior is no longer transactional—it’s systemic. It has aligned itself with China and Russia in an emerging authoritarian bloc. It has declared denuclearization a non-starter. Seoul must adjust to this—not by giving up, but by avoiding self-delusion.

And finally, South Korea must accept that the North Korea question may not have a clean resolution in the near future. Diplomacy is still necessary—but not all diplomacy needs to end in a summit. There is value in low-level talks, in backchannels, in coordination with allies. Peace is not always built in a day—or with a handshake.

The tragedy of Groundhog Day was not just the repetition, but how long it took Phil to see the problem wasn’t the world around him—it was himself. For South Korea, the tragedy would be repeating yet another empty summit cycle, knowing full well how it ends.

Lee Jae-myung has the opportunity to do things differently. He can resist the lure of cinematic diplomacy and focus on the quiet, unglamorous work of long-term policy. He can escape the loop.

But if he doesn’t, if he chases the same illusions, we’ll all wake up one morning to the same song on the radio, the same handshake on the DMZ, probably the same guy on CNN saying how great and long-lasting it all is, followed by the same inevitable disappointment. Just another Groundhog Day on the peninsula.