South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun and U.S. President George Bush took a major step in restoring mutual trust in the South Korea-U.S. alliance by announcing at their May 14 summit that the Korean Peninsula should be nuclear-free and that the North Korean nuclear problem should be resolved through peaceful means.
Although the South Korean-U.S. joint statement was somewhat vague regarding what concrete measures the two countries would take should North Korea continue to pursue its nuclear-weapons program, it did reaffirm that the two allies "will not tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea" and that any "increased threat to peace and stability on the Peninsula would require consideration of further steps." As a result, the ROK-U.S. bilateral alliance remains sound and relevant not only for South Korea but for all of Northeast Asia, including Japan.
The lack of trust that developed between Seoul and Washington was caused to a large extent by their different perspectives on North Korea, which derived from their divergent domestic political processes.