By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

In Case Luck Runs Out

Since coming to office in January, U.S. President Donald Trump has waded into several geopolitical crises, including Russia’s war in Ukraine and Israel’s wars in Gaza and Iran. Thus far, however, he has said comparatively little about the growing strength of the Kim regime in North Korea, leading some analysts to suggest the administration is neglecting one of the most critical security issues in Asia.

But Trump has not forgotten about North Korea. Although his administration has been preoccupied with other immediate priorities, multiple indications reviving talks with Pyongyang remain high on the president’s agenda. Soon after his inauguration, for instance, Trump told Fox News that he would “reach out” to North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, whom he described as a “smart guy.” In late March, Trump told reporters he was in “communication” with North Korea and intended to “do something” regarding the country at some point.” Moreover, Trump’s foreign policy team includes several Korea specialists in key roles at the State Department, such as Allison Hooker and Kevin Kim.

There are several reasons to think that renewed talks between Washington and Pyongyang might now lead to a deal. For Trump, it would offer an opportunity for a foreign policy success that has proved elusive so far in the cases of Ukraine and the Middle East. It is also worth recalling that Trump has unfinished business with North Korea. During his first administration, Trump met with Kim but was unable to finalize a deal; his return to office gives him a second chance. For its part, the North Korean regime is considerably stronger than it was a few years ago, but it also knows that its position could soon change, most notably concerning Russia. Furthermore, there already is a template for a plausible “small” deal between North Korea and the United States that, while imperfect, could provide a way forward. It will not be easy, of course, but there are several factors now at play that could draw North Korea back to the negotiating table.

 

Changing Fortunes

To understand what a Trump deal with North Korea might look like, it is useful to consider the president’s earlier engagement with the Kim regime. In February 2019, Trump met Kim at a summit meeting in Hanoi, during which the two sides tried to achieve a so-called small deal. According to the U.S. proposal, North Korea would dismantle all of its known nuclear facilities in exchange for the UN lifting—or at least significantly relaxing—Security Council sanctions, bringing much-needed relief to the North Korean economy. This was known as a “small” deal because North Korea would still retain some nuclear weapons. It was not, in other words, calling for a “complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization,” which is known as the “big deal.”

At the time, Pyongyang was in a tough spot, and it appeared that the Trump administration had real leverage. Kim was facing the Security Council’s newly imposed harsh sanctions regime that was vigorously enforced not only by the United States but also by China and Russia, which were more concerned then about nonproliferation than about maintaining stability in Northeast Asia. For a brief moment, the sanctions deprived North Korea of foreign assistance and pushed the country into a corner: its economy shrank 4.1 percent in 2018. Reaching an agreement with the United States seemed almost to be a matter of survival for North Korea.

Nonetheless, North Korea did not buckle in Hanoi. The two sides were unable to agree on the precise scale of concessions that North Korea would have to make and on the list of facilities to be dismantled. The North Koreans were ready to dismantle all facilities at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, which had been North Korea’s key nuclear research facility for decades, but the U.S. side was aware of additional uranium enrichment plants in other locations and insisted on also including them. The talks collapsed almost immediately.

Since then, North Korea has become far stronger. Following the failed summit, North Korea didn’t crumble under the weight of sanctions but instead ended up benefiting from a series of unforeseen geopolitical shifts as both China and Russia sought to improve relations with Pyongyang.

First, around 2019, Beijing began relaxing its attitude toward Pyongyang. North Korea’s nuclear program had long been a source of tension between Beijing and Pyongyang, but as China’s conflict with the United States kicked into high gear, Beijing started seeing its shared border with North Korea as a vital buffer zone protecting China’s northeast. Beijing has since seemed determined to keep North Korea afloat, providing it with moderate but essentially unconditional aid.

North Korea’s sudden windfall from Russia was even less anticipated than its renewed ties with China. Once the war in Ukraine began, in February 2022, the Russian military faced a severe shortage of heavy artillery shells. Moscow, however, soon discovered that North Korea not only had massive stockpiles of such ammunition but also was willing to supply them to Russia for an undisclosed, hefty price. By October 2024, North Korea’s accumulated revenues from these sales were estimated at $5.5 billion, and that is a conservative estimate. To put this figure in context, in 2016, before the sanctions hit, North Korea’s total exports were estimated to be $2.5 billion. North Korea and Russia also entered a formal military alliance in 2024, and shortly thereafter, Pyongyang sent some 12,000 North Korean soldiers to Russia to fight against Ukrainian forces, in exchange for further financial payments from Moscow.

Meanwhile, North Korea’s nuclear arsenal has grown rapidly. Since the Hanoi summit, North Korea has developed and successfully tested a number of new long-distance delivery systems, including the solid-fuel Hwasong-19, a new intercontinental ballistic missile that can be prepared for launch in minutes and can hit any target in the continental United States. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has estimated that North Korea currently has an arsenal of about 50 nuclear warheads. And according to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, North Korea stands in its “strongest strategic position” in decades. Should the Trump administration meet the Kim regime again at the negotiating table, Washington may have to offer Pyongyang big concessions. But despite Washington’s reduced leverage, there are reasons to believe some version of a small deal might still be within reach.

 

Writing On The Wall

For starters, North Korea has signaled since Trump returned to office that it is ready to play ball. According to several sources, North Korean officials and diplomats have in recent weeks told their contacts in a number of countries that they would like to resume talks with the United States. This tracks with other signs from Pyongyang, including a softening tone in official North Korean media channels.

From Pyongyang’s perspective, reviving the main contours of a small deal would be attractive for two simple reasons. Most immediately, North Korea’s current level of trade with Russia is unlikely to last after hostilities in Ukraine end. Indeed, Moscow’s financial flows to Pyongyang could wind down almost overnight. Aside from munitions, there isn’t much of a trade opportunity between the two countries; the two economies are fundamentally incompatible. The few items North Korea can sell on the international market, such as minerals and seafood, are of little interest to Russian importers. This economic mismatch has undermined numerous past attempts to boost economic cooperation between the two countries. For decades, trade between North Korea and Russia has followed the same pattern, flourishing only when Moscow is willing to subsidize it—a reality that is not lost on decision-makers in Pyongyang.

If and when Russia’s war in Ukraine ends, China’s support would likely continue, but North Korea is probably not thrilled at the prospect of being overly reliant on its giant neighbor. North Korea’s decision-makers have always viewed China as a threat because it is the only country that might have both the will and the means to meddle with North Korean domestic politics. Indeed, Pyongyang has consistently tried to keep some distance from Beijing. This trend has become even more pronounced under Kim’s leadership. When Jang Song Thaek, Kim’s leading adviser, was purged and executed in 2013, for instance, one of the accusations against him published in North Korean media was his alleged willingness to make concessions to China.

Rather than rely solely on China, Pyongyang would much prefer to diversify its aid sources—something it could do if the Hanoi deal were revived and the UN sanctions were finally relaxed. South Korea’s newly elected president, Lee Jae-myung, for instance, might be willing to bring back the progressive tradition in South Korea of showering North Korea with aid and subsidized trade deals. If sanctions were lifted, the North Korean government could also resume talks with Japan. For years, the two countries have discussed compensation for abuses committed during Japan’s colonial rule of Korea (1910–45), a period that was marked by the use of forced labor, the extraction of mineral resources, and discrimination against the local population.

This freedom to maneuver both geopolitically and economically should be a strong incentive for the Kim regime. Accepting a Trump deal, in other words, would both alleviate some long-standing economic pressures and allow Pyongyang to return to its preferred strategy of exploiting great-power rivalries to its advantage.

 

The Least Bad Option

A small deal has serious shortcomings for both North Korea and the United States, but it still might be the least bad option. Such a deal is not going to bring about North Korea’s denuclearization, of course, and Pyongyang will likely attempt to cheat by hiding some of its nuclear facilities. But a small deal could still slow down—or perhaps even halt—the further advancement of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. By dismantling North Korea’s nuclear reactors and most or even all of its centrifuges, such a deal would cause producers to lose most of their R&D and production capacity. This would drastically reduce the number of nuclear devices North Korea could produce and also significantly slow its technological progress regarding weapons of mass destruction. Given the progress North Korea has made since 2019, however, Pyongyang would still retain a nuclear arsenal formidable enough to make any foreign attack unthinkable. Its security, in other words, would not be meaningfully endangered by a small deal.

North Korean decision-makers might also see this particular moment, with the Trump administration in power, as Pyongyang’s best opportunity to find relief from UN sanctions. North Korean officials are generally skeptical that agreements with democratic countries will last. They assume that if the ruling party changes in the next presidential election, any prior agreements will be tossed into the wastebasket, as happened, for example, with the Iran nuclear deal that was painstakingly negotiated by the Obama administration but thrown out by Trump. Still, if the sanctions were lifted now, North Korea could reasonably hope they won’t be reimposed again. Even if, say, a Democrat wins the U.S. presidential election in 2028 and decides to renege on a small deal by pursuing new rounds of sanctions against North Korea, the new administration would have great difficulty getting China and Russia on board, as both countries now believe their interests are better served by maintaining North Korea’s status quo rather than working toward its denuclearization. North Korea’s leadership thus has valid reasons to consider the proposals that may come from a second Trump administration.

It is worth remembering, of course, that should negotiations resume, North Korea is likely to take a much tougher stance, and the Trump administration will probably have to accept a worse deal than the one it proposed in Hanoi. But North Korea knows that it lucked out the last time around and didn’t end up paying a hefty price for walking away—saved, as it was, by China’s tensions with the United States and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Now, however, Pyongyang should be interested in a deal that grants it greater economic autonomy as well as distance from potentially dangerous neighbors. It might be interested in a deal, in other words, in case its luck runs out.

 

 

For updates click hompage here