North Korea’s Nukes

North Korea isn’t your regular totalitarian dictatorship. Yes, it has an appalling human rights record, corruption and poverty are rife, and there is no political or economic freedom to speak of. Yet a couple of chilling characteristics set it apart: a nuclear weapons program and a unpredictable young leader. Whether Kim Jong Un’s military is capable of an effective nuclear strike is open to question. But North Korea’s aggressive rhetoric and missile and nuclear tests, in defiance of United Nations resolutions, prompted U.S. President Donald Trump to say all options — including military ones — were on the table. Within months, Kim and Trump were at a table together, signing a commitment to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons. Previous such agreements all went nowhere, so will it be different this time?

At the first meeting between serving leaders of their countries, Kim and Trump signed a document in Singapore that was short on detail but big on symbolism. Trump said he didn’t know how long North Korea would take to shed its nuclear arsenal, “but it will be quickly.” Just months earlier, the pair had traded personal insults – Trump was a “dotard,” Kim a “little rocket man.” The U.S. president had also threatened to unleash “fire and fury” amid an escalation of North Korean nuclear and missile testing. At the end of 2017, Kim had declared his nuclear force “complete.” His military had test-fired long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles — Kim said the entire U.S. was now in range — and carried out its sixth and most powerful nuclear test. Those provocations prompted the UN Security Council to toughen economic sanctions twice. Crucially, China —North Korea's biggest trade partner — began enforcing them more rigorously. The big chill got under way when Kim called for talks with South Korea in his New Year's Day speech. In April, Kim held a landmark summit with South Korea President Moon Jae In, symbolically shaking hands at their heavily fortified border and agreeing to pursue ``complete'' denuclearization, without saying how. Also in 2018, Kim embarked on the first of three visits to China to meet President Xi Jinping, who is seen as a key player in U.S. efforts to ensure the Trump-Kim summit leads to a more specific commitment to disarm.

The Background