Aug. 18 (UPI) — President Trump, as you sit down with President Lee Jae Myung on Aug. 25, you must not be swayed by his dangerously naive stance on “respect” for North Korea‘s political system. I say this not as a politician or a pundit, but as a soldier and practitioner/strategist who has spent his life confronting the nature of authoritarian regimes and understanding what it takes to resist them. President Lee’s position, that South Korea should affirm “respect” for the North’s totalitarian system and renounce unification by absorption, is not only strategically misguided but also morally bankrupt. It plays directly into Kim Jong Un‘s political warfare playbook, undermines the very purpose of the ROK/U.S. alliance, and sends a chilling message to 25 million oppressed Koreans living under tyranny.

Let’s be crystal clear: North Korea (with its Workers Party of Korea) is not a legitimate political system (which is why many of us write “north” in the lower case, though our editors often correct this). It is not a state that deserves our diplomatic courtesies or rhetorical deference. It is a mafia-like crime family cult masquerading as a government. It is a totalitarian regime that has committed, and continues to commit, crimes against humanity, as documented exhaustively in the 2014 United Nations Commission of Inquiry report. These are not allegations. They are facts backed by satellite images, eyewitness testimony, and escapee accounts. We are talking about gulags, torture chambers, public executions, and enforced starvation. To “respect” such a system is to betray the Korean people in the North who suffer daily under its jackboot.

President Lee’s argument is that by affirming respect and renouncing absorption, he can create space for inter-Korean dialogue and reduce tensions. But this is a fantasy built on hope, not strategy. The Kim family regime does not seek coexistence. It seeks domination. It does not want peace. It wants submission. It does not seek reconciliation. It seeks leverage. Every time a South Korean leader or American president makes conciliatory gestures without demanding reciprocal action, Kim Jong Un sees it not as good faith, but as weakness. He exploits it to gain legitimacy, extract economic concessions, and drive wedges into our alliance.

President Lee says he is not seeking unification by absorption. Fine. But he also says he “respects” the North’s political system. That is where the real danger lies. Because the more we normalize the abnormal, the more we embolden the regime to harden its rule. What the Korean people in the North deserve is not the international community’s respect for their captors, but solidarity with their longing for liberation. They deserve a unified Korea, not by force, but by freedom. That is not absorption. That is self-determination.

President Trump, you know what it means to negotiate from a position of strength. You know how dangerous it is to give away leverage before the other side has made a single concession. Do not allow your personal rapport with Kim Jong Un, or your desire for a legacy-defining deal, to cloud your judgment. You called Kim “rocket man” before you exchanged “love letters.” But love letters won’t free the Korean people, and respect for the regime won’t bring peace.

President Lee’s gestures, halting propaganda broadcasts, telling activists to stop sending leaflets and restoring the 2018 military agreement, may seem like confidence-building measures. But without reciprocity, they are simply appeasement. Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un’s sister and a key regime mouthpiece, has already dismissed Lee’s outreach as a “pipe dream.” That should tell us everything we need to know about Pyongyang’s intentions.

The ROK/U.S. alliance must remain grounded in shared values, freedom and liberty, human rights, and the rule of law. Any strategy that begins by legitimizing the enemy’s political system undermines those very values. You would never “respect” ISIS’s caliphate or al-Qaeda’s ideology. Why offer respect to a regime that systematically enslaves its own people and threatens nuclear war?

To be clear, no one is advocating war. We are advocating clarity of purpose and unity of message. Our strategic objective must remain what it has always been: the peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula under a liberal democratic system that guarantees the rights and dignity of all Koreans. That does not require invasion. It requires principled resistance to tyranny and a long-term strategy to support internal change, what some might call a Korean-led, values-based unification.

You have the power to set the tone for this summit. Do not give Kim Jong Un the propaganda victory of seeing the leader of the free world align with a South Korean president who chooses appeasement over accountability. Instead, reaffirm the alliance’s moral foundation. Remember the image of Ji Seung Ho holding up his crutches at your first State of the Union address to inspire all of us with his escape from the North. Speak directly to the Korean people in the North: We have not forgotten you. We will not abandon you. We do not “respect” your oppressors. We believe in your future.

Mr. President, history will remember what you say in that room with President Lee. Will you echo his message of concession? Or will you stand firm on the principles that made America great and the alliance strong?

I urge you, do not be persuaded by words that excuse oppression. Instead, speak truth. And let that truth be a beacon to all Koreans, North and South, who still believe in freedom.

David Maxwell is a retired U.S. Army Special Forces colonel who has spent more than 30 years in the Asia Pacific region. He specializes in Northeast Asian security affairs and irregular, unconventional and political warfare. He is vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy and a senior fellow at the Global Peace Foundation. After he retired, he became associate director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University. He is on the board of directors of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea and the OSS Society and is the editor at large for the Small Wars Journal.