can lateral be made to function like left outer join?

[Steve Richter <stephenrichter@xxxxxxxxx>]

a subquery returns a null column when the subquery returns zero rows:

select  srcdta,
        ( select ibmreqd from sysibm/sysdummy1
          where  ibmreqd = 'N'  ) ibmreqd
from    qrpglesrc

but replace the subquery with lateral and the outer query returns nothing
if the lateral returns zero rows. Like the lateral is considered a join and
not a left outer join. Is that correct? Can lateral be made to behave like
a left outer join?

( I want to use lateral because lateral supports "fetch first row only" )

select  a.srcdta, b.ibmreqd
from    qrpglesrc a
, lateral ( select  c.ibmreqd from sysibm/sysdummy1 c
            where   c.ibmreqd = 'N' ) b