Every American administration pledges to learn from the past when devising a strategy for contending with nuclear North Korea. And yet, few portfolios are so paralyzed by path dependency and resistance to learning. But now, confronted with the inescapable prospect that the legacy approach is actually creating risk rather than reducing it, the time has come to learn and pivot.
The Trump administration should sharpen the choice for North Korea, making it enticing, raising the stakes, and being prepared to back it up. In service of this, the U.S. and South Korean governments could make the bold decision to put denuclearization on the back burner in favor of arms control negotiations aimed at tangible risk reduction. If North Korea is unwilling to engage, it would be forced to contend with bolstered deterrence from the U.S.-South Korean alliance.
To be fair, in the land of “lousy policy options,” nothing is easy — even the simple task of assessing which attempt at denuclearizing North Korea was most effective is more complicated than it first appears. It is possible to consider the terms and implementations of major denuclearization attempts from the recent past — the Agreed Framework (1994 to 2002), the Six Party Talks (2003 to 2009), and the Trump-Kim summits (2018 to 2019) — on an apples-to-apples basis. However, conducting such analysis in isolation from the shifting circumstances that enabled and constrained the negotiations is a rather fruitless endeavor. Each deal reflects the moment, building on and reacting to previous talks, immersed in the fluctuating expectations of players, and influenced by geopolitics du jour.
Like Dr. Frankenstein, it’s tempting to piece together all the most desirable aspects of different engagements: the meaningful presence of the International Atomic Energy Agency during the Agreed Framework, the multilateral nature of the Six Party Talks, and the top-level engagement of the Trump-Kim summits. But this, of course, is impossible.
North Korea’s leverage, bargaining power, and international relationships are now more powerful and secure than at any time since the end of the Cold War. The possibility of complete denuclearization has declined proportionate to advancements in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Reflecting this, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un has set a high bar for talks by stating that he’s only willing to sit “face to face” with Washington if it abandons its “absurd pursuit” of denuclearization. Despite this intransigence, both the U.S. and South Korean governments have expressed unprecedented flexibility to open space for talks. Which leads to the question…
Why Won’t Kim Pick up the Phone?
Parsing current statements from U.S., South Korean, and North Korean leadership about willingness and conditions to engage, the most striking takeaway is the surprising reconcilability of the positions. Seoul and Washington have gradually moved toward begrudging acknowledgment — if not acceptance — that Pyongyang is a nuclear power, while competitive geopolitical pressures tied to U.S. relations with Moscow and Beijing have eased and Seoul has embraced “peaceful coexistence” and risk management with its northern neighbor. In short, in the words of former Defense Secretary William Perry, America and South Korea are committing to “deal with the North Korean government as it is, not as we might wish it to be.” All of this should facilitate engagement.
The question then is why, despite all this, North Korea’s leader still won’t pick up the phone. First, many observers insisted, let’s wait for the U.S. presidential election. Then they said, let’s wait for the South Korean political turmoil to die down, and then for its presidential election. Next, they said, let’s wait for the Ninth Party Congress. But now all the leaders are in place, all the policy reviews are completed, and the policies are surprisingly harmonious. Despite this, nothing has congealed. Why?
Former Deputy Secretary of State Steve Biegun explained that after an agreement was struck regarding the end state of negotiations, North Korea controlled the tempo of the talks — that’s always been true to a certain extent. And although all sides have contributed to an atmosphere of mistrust, Pyongyang’s foot dragging is better described as strategic than tactical.
Indeed, Pyongyang’s answer to the end of the Cold War and the arrival of unipolarity was a hedging strategy. This strategy was characterized by the simultaneous pursuit of nuclear weapons and rapprochement with the United States, South Korea, and Japan. The attention and bargaining power the nuclear program created for Pyongyang was one of its major assets.
But the diminishing returns of that strategy became evident in the mid-2010s. Even for allies in Beijing and Moscow united in the effort to diminish U.S. influence in Northeast Asia, Pyongyang’s nuclear program came to present more trouble than was worth defending. Pyongyang searched and struggled for answers. In the immediate aftermath of Hanoi, Kim’s regime was truly adrift. Pyongyang was not totally without partners, as Beijing and Moscow soft-pedaled and then imploded sanctions, but Kim lacked a viable long-term strategy. North Korea could eke out an existence in the cracks of the international system at the expense of its people’s wellbeing, but little else.
All of that changed with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Moscow, in need of artillery and missiles, revived its Cold War-era military alliance and defense industrial relationship with Pyongyang. In return, North Korea may have received up to $14 billion and help from Russia on its illicit weapons programs. This has done more to revive North Korea’s economy and global standing than three decades of denuclearization engagements ever did. After six straight years of negative or infinitesimal growth, North Korea’s economy grew by 3 to 4 percent in 2023 and 2024 in real GDP terms, according to an estimate by South Korea’s central bank. Moscow’s assistance also supercharged Pyongyang’s military and reinforced its authoritarian system — two facets under threat of curtailment via engagement with Seoul and Washington.
But nothing lasts forever, so Kim Jong Un must be thinking about the next steps, as Andrei Lankov points out.
The U.S.-South Korean alliance tends to think in terms of four- and five-year cycles. This is natural since that’s the maximum runway for implementing executive branch policies. Kim, General Secretary Xi Jinping, and Putin understand that Washington operates this way, but they have very different timelines in mind. Kim plans 10 years ahead and maintains a keen eye on his legacy and succession. His persona betrays an aspiration for respect and admiration, much more akin to his grandfather than his father.
Since North Korea has no economic relationship with America or South Korea, minimal domestic pressure to prioritize citizen wellbeing, and no real buy-in to the international rules-based order, time is on Kim Jong Un’s side (for now). When Kim doesn’t like his dance partner, he can simply wait for a new one. He can even try to change the music.
It may, therefore, be overly ambitious to attempt to finally solve the problem within a single administration. Indeed, some problems are so intractable they can only be managed.
What Can We Do About It?
With all this as a table setting, let’s consider the possible approaches and their drawbacks.
On numerous occasions, President Donald Trump expressed a willingness to engage with Kim Jong Un and even raised the idea of relaxing sanctions. These efforts have thus far been rebuffed, including a reported refusal by the North Korean Mission in New York to accept a letter from Trump to Kim intending to reopen dialogue.
Ending conflicts is ostensibly a central part of the Trump administration’s foreign policy platform. Three-quarters of Americans support another Trump-Kim meeting, though at least half of the respondents want preconditions such as halting missile tests or agreeing to denuclearization, according to an October 2025 poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. The basic point here is that meeting Kim wouldn’t necessarily come at a political cost for Trump. The Trump administration is unconstrained by orthodoxy and could be flexible about the way talks are conducted. Because of this, things could pick up very quickly. For example, Trump could stop over in Pyongyang on his way home from Beijing in May. That would spur a frenzy of regional diplomatic activity.
Kim will decide to engage when he perceives that the benefits of engagement are greater than the costs. On the benefits side of the ledger are: prestige at home and abroad, diplomatic leverage within his own bloc, potential long-term economic benefits, and the chance to lock in (at least passive) recognition as a de facto nuclear power. On the costs side are: internal loss of face if things go south as they did in Hanoi, potential opposition from within his bloc, and concerns that getting too cozy with the U.S. president could undermine the war footing narrative used to justify totalitarian controls.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that North Korea never intended to denuclearize. Let’s assume that, since some of the core reasons for the North’s nuclear program have to do with internal domestic politics and intra-alliance hedging, the United States and South Korea simply don’t have what North Korea needs to give up its weapons.
Taking that as a given, let’s analyze the effectiveness of the engagements. Did they achieve anything? Were they worth pursuing? Without the Agreed Framework, North Korea may have developed “as many as 100 nuclear weapons” by 2003, according to former U.S. Ambassador Thomas Hubbard. And, in the period from 1990 to 2017, there was a correlation between negotiations and a pause in provocations, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The regional temperature was lowered, confidence-building measures were established, and the likelihood of miscalculation was reduced. These outcomes fall well short of the goal of denuclearization, but one could make the reasonable argument that they’re preferable to the alternative.
The trouble is that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program has been expanding and improving at an alarming rate, undermining regional deterrence. The threat to U.S., South Korean, and Japanese homelands is worse than ever. And because of the asymmetric cost advantage of missiles over interceptors, the threat will only grow more dire over time.
Noting that “past denuclearization policies have arguably left the United States worse off than before,” Victor Cha urged the development of a “policy that does not result in an increase in the nuclear threat.” The 2025 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community concludes that, “Kim has no intention of negotiating away his strategic weapons programs.” Policy prescriptions ought to be anchored around assessments, not the other way around.
With that in mind, it’s high time to ask whether better has become the enemy of good. The concern that acknowledging North Korea’s nuclear weapons will create a dangerous precedent to spur future nuclear breakout states has enabled a paralysis that has led to a far more dangerous and capable North Korean nuclear and missile program. As Ankit Panda argues, the concern about acknowledging North Korea’s nuclear status “is a red herring in many ways and should not hamstring policy changes that can shift momentum toward risk reduction.”
The present policy debate is needlessly dichotomized. There is no need to formally accept North Korea’s nuclear status to make progress, nor is there any need to abandon the eventual goal of denuclearization. Advocating for arms control and risk reduction does not automatically imply a need to ratify North Korea’s nuclear status. And those favoring a long-term commitment to denuclearization can nonetheless welcome pragmatic risk reduction that falls short of that objective in the interim.
There is some merit to the argument that any arms control approach — even one that does not explicitly abandon denuclearization —alleviates some residual pressure on Pyongyang and could therefore buy time for the Kim regime to continue developing its weapons programs. But the merits of an incremental risk reduction and arms control deal should not be measured against some platonic ideal of an imaginary denuclearized and pacified North Korea, but rather against the status quo. Despite decades of isolation, sanctions, and pressure, North Korea has succeeded in advancing towards key objectives, including: expanding production of fissile material; improving, miniaturizing, and standardizing nuclear warheads; diversifying, advancing, and expanding missile production; making progress in the development of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles to evade U.S.-South Korean missile defense systems; and proliferating weapons systems to revanchist states and rogue actors around the world.
Pyongyang is therefore rapidly proceeding towards its goals of achieving full-spectrum deterrence and a credible second-strike capability, presenting a clear and present threat to both the U.S. homeland and allies South Korea and Japan. Moreover, given that interceptors are more expensive to produce than missiles and global stocks are dangerously low, North Korea has the edge in an arms race. The opportunity cost of doing nothing in the face of this growing threat is unacceptably high.
A Fresh Approach
Pyongyang has, with progressive intensity, spurned the notion of a deal that allocates incremental rewards for gradual steps towards denuclearization. This quid pro quo has served as the basic premise for all negotiations with North Korea since the early 1990s. Now, Pyongyang — armed with its enhanced bargaining leverage — has defiantly demanded that the United States drop this incremental approach and publicly cast aside denuclearization.
Confronted with this new dilemma, a fresh approach could be to reach out to Pyongyang to articulate a stark choice: work collaboratively to ease tensions and normalize relations through arms control or continue down the path of arms races and deterrence, to the detriment of all parties. This approach would give Pyongyang a more attractive opportunity for mutually beneficial engagement. Rather than static and binary, the implementation should be dynamic and responsive.
Over time, North Korea’s leadership will acknowledge that the U.S.-South Korean alliance is ready to take practical and courageous steps to improve the security environment on the Korean Peninsula, but will not have hope held hostage. The Kim regime will come to understand that its actions are the key. If it ignores this sincere attempt to improve relations, the United States and South Korea can and should focus on deterrence, maintaining an open door for engagement, while also taking pragmatic steps to keep both countries safe in the face of North Korean threats, arms races, and recalcitrance.
The artistry is to present an alluring enough option to coax Kim Jong Un out of his shell without giving away the farm. To do so, this approach would remove denuclearization as a precondition to arms control and risk reduction. Denuclearization should remain the long-term objective and leverage should be saved for that purpose, but productive negotiations below that gold standard should no longer be made conditional on that commitment. This provides Kim Jong Un with the domestic cover to make the bold choice to re-engage without abandoning the long-term aim of denuclearization.
For the United States and South Korea, the time has arrived to prioritize tangible steps to reduce risk over dubious promises. After all, North Korea has already pledged to surrender its nuclear weapons multiple times to no avail. There’s no reason this approach couldn’t eventually lead to denuclearization — it simply wouldn’t premise the entire set of exchanges on that outcome.
Such a strategy would begin with a gesture to turn down the temperature and clarify the opportunity. Seoul and Washington would quietly communicate that America and South Korea are ready to discuss a bold new initiative that provides concessions, such as sanctions relief that North Korea has long sought, and will no longer require a commitment to denuclearize up front. The initiative would begin with incremental sanctions reduction and the establishment of liaison offices in exchange for an immediate suspension of all missile and nuclear testing. The first U.N. sanctions to be gradually phased down would be those with some ties to the civilian economy, such as prohibitions on exporting textiles and seafood.
Next, the initiative would offer additional sanctions reduction in exchange for a freeze on fissile production — the key enabling factor that determines how many warheads Pyongyang can build — and weapons proliferation. The next sanctions to be phased down could be the cap on imports of petroleum, a limit that has been rendered largely ineffective by Russia and China’s willingness to flout the resolution they voted for.
Eventually, for the latter stages of verification, transparency will be required in the form of International Atomic Energy Agency monitoring and inspections. However, that will not be necessary for the early phase of the initiative because open-source monitoring methods, including high-resolution satellite imagery, thermal infrared monitoring, multispectral analysis, and reactor core modeling, have advanced to the point that they provide credible and timely insights.
Simultaneously, the initiative would reinforce South Korea’s policy of peaceful coexistence and strive to revive the inter-Korean Comprehensive Military Agreement from 2018. Coupled with other forms of confidence-building and tension-reduction frameworks, these initiatives could build towards an end-of-war declaration in recognition of tangible efforts toward peace.
Although North Korea is accumulating benefits and leverage from its Russia partnership in the short term, that arrangement cannot provide Pyongyang with a prosperous future. When the wartime mutual interest evaporates, the two economies will no longer be compatible. Perhaps the most substantial benefit that Moscow provides is intangible: a hedge against over-dependence on Beijing, which accounted for 98 percent of its trade in 2024.
The United States and South Korea could easily step into that same role under a normalization-for-arms control scenario, leaving Russia out in the cold. This approach is favorable to the status quo because it presents North Korea with a viable alternative to the status quo and then, failing their buy-in, it proceeds to generate additional leverage that simultaneously pushes Pyongyang towards the right choice and makes America and its allies safer.
Such deterrence-bolstering measures should include: additional missile defense architecture in theater; accelerated trilateral defense exercises with the United States, South Korea, and Japan; more frequent rotational deployments of strategic assets; and a higher tempo of joint defensive military exercises. Pyongyang’s leadership will not be able to ignore the fact that their own stubbornness is the main driver of their insecurity.
This initiative is not risk-free — if talks fail, there could be an alliance management cost, a domestic political cost, and a proliferation precedent problem. The worst-case scenario would be if North Korea cheats on the deal by absorbing the benefits and slyly continuing production and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. North Korea no doubt fears that the United States will do the same, offering “reversible” concessions to induce North Korea’s disarmament, just to ratchet those levers of pressure later. That’s why this approach begins with an externally observable series of exchanges. That builds trust while establishing positive patterns of interaction and channels for hashing out disagreements.
For four decades, the United States and South Korea have strived to first prevent North Korea’s nuclear breakout and next to convince its leaders to abandon the program. The status quo has become indefensible. It’s time for a fresh approach that creates conditions for rapprochement and risk reduction, while also preparing for a dance partner who doesn’t like the music.
Jonathan Corrado is director of policy for the Korea Society, nonresident senior fellow in the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, and lecturer of international and public affairs at Columbia University. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of his affiliations.
Image: KCNA Watch
