Will the Donald J Trump administration re-initiate its first- term nuclear diplomacy towards North Korea and seek to disarm it? Observers say any attempt to denuclearize North Korea will at best be a “a pipe-dream”. The Trump presidency still insists on the complete denuclearization of the peninsula. The regime of North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un is unlikely to accept it.

In November 2023 North Korea asserted it would never sit face-to-face with the United States if its sovereignty—including its possession of nuclear weapons—was on the agenda. Earlier, in September 2022, the North declared it would never relinquish its nuclear weapons.

The reasons for the North Korean nuclear obstinacy are not far to seek. North Korea’s policy has always been for advancing its nuclear-missile program. Of course, it entered into some of the agreements on its nuclear disbarment. It ratified the multilateral Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1985. In 1992, it agreed with South Korea to “not test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy, or use nuclear weapons”.

During former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s visit to Pyongyang in 2000, North Korea

© Blitz