February 5, 2025
SEOUL – The main opposition Democratic Party of Korea has submitted a proposal to nominate US President Donald Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize for his Korean Peninsula peace efforts.
The party in Seoul said Tuesday it had submitted a proposal nominating Trump for the prestigious prize with the Norwegian Nobel Committee on Jan. 27, and it had informed the “US side” about the nomination.
The Democratic Party cited Trump’s “efforts to denuclearize North Korea” and “contribution to peace on the Korean Peninsula” as reasons for the nomination.
The party said that Trump built the foundations for establishing peace on the Korean Peninsula during his first term through his summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in 2018 and 2019.
“We are recommending him as a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize in the hope that he continues his peacemaking efforts for the Korean Peninsula,” Rep. Jo Seoung-lae, the Democratic Party chief spokesperson, told reporters.
Notes belonging to Rep. Park Sun-won of the Democratic Party were captured by a press camera Monday, in which he wrote that the party had shared with the “US side” about nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, and that the matter was to be reported to the White House as well.
Park’s notes revealed he was meeting with acting US Ambassador Joseph Yun on Monday for lunch, where the lawmaker shared that the party had submitted the nomination for Trump.
Park said in a release Tuesday the Democratic Party proposed that Trump receive the peace prize so that the US president would “lead the peace initiatives on the Korean Peninsula and Northeast Asia by bringing an early end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and negotiations with North Korea on the nuclear issue.”
Park suggested that the North Korean nuclear problem could be addressed through direct dialogue between the US and North Korea, or settled as part of discussions about the war in Ukraine.
Park said that since North Korea is participating in the war in Ukraine, Trump was expected to meet with leaders of the countries involved in the war, which would include Kim Jong-un, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“Some contact between the US and North Korea could happen sooner than we think,” the lawmaker said.
The Democratic Party of Korea has been seeking to align itself closely with the Trump administration and his Republican Party since he won a second nonconsecutive term.
Rep. Lee Un-ju, who is on the Democratic Party’s top decision-making body, said in a recent interview with The Korea Herald that the Democratic Party in Seoul has more in common with the Republican Party than with the Democratic Party in Washington, especially in terms of their foreign policy approaches.
Former President Moon Jae-in, who was in office when the US-North Korea summits in Singapore and Vietnam took place, did not nominate Trump for the peace prize. But Kim Eui-kyeom, who was spokesperson for Moon’s presidential office, had said in 2019 that the president believes “Trump is deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize.”