SEOUL — Since beginning his second term earlier this year, President Trump has spoken optimistically about restarting denuclearization talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whom he met for a series of historic summits in 2018 and 2019 that ended without a deal.
“I have a great relationship with Kim Jong Un, and we’ll see what happens, but certainly he’s a nuclear power,” he told reporters at an Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in March.
Earlier this month, Trump attempted to send a letter to Kim via North Korean diplomats in New York, only to be rebuffed, according to Seoul-based NK News. And now, following the U.S. military’s strike on three nuclear facilities in Iran on Sunday, the chances of Pyongyang returning to the bargaining table have become even slimmer.
For North Korea, which has conducted six nuclear tests over the years in the face of severe economic sanctions and international reprobation — and consequently has a far more advanced nuclear program than Iran — many analysts say the lesson from Sunday is clear: A working nuclear deterrent is the only guarantor of security.
“More than anything, the North Korean regime is probably thinking that they did well to dig in their heels to keep developing their nuclear program,” said Kim Dong-yup, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
A TV screen at the Seoul Railway Station shows the launch of a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile on Oct. 31.
(Lee Jin-man / Associated Press)
“I think this strike means the end of any sort of denuclearization talks or diplomatic solutions that the U.S. had in mind in the past,” he said. “I don’t think it’s simply a matter of worsened circumstances; I think the possibility has now gone close to zero.”
On Monday, North Korea’s foreign ministry condemned the U.S. strike on Iran as a violation of international law as well as “the territorial integrity and security interests of a sovereign state,” according to North Korean state media.
“The present situation of the Middle East, which is shaking the very basis of international peace and security, is the inevitable product of Israel’s reckless bravado as it advances its unilateral interests through ceaseless war moves and territorial expansion, and that of the Western-style free order which has so far tolerated and encouraged Israeli acts,” an unnamed ministry spokesperson said.
Trump has threatened to attack North Korea before.
Early in Trump’s first term, when Pyongyang successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the U.S. West Coast., administration officials reportedly considered launching a “bloody nose” strike — an attack on a nuclear site or military facility that is small enough to prevent escalation into full-blown war but severe enough to make a point.
“Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely,” Trump wrote on social media in August 2017.
While it is still uncertain how much damage U.S. stealth bombers inflicted on Iran’s nuclear sites at Natanz, Isfahan and Fordo — and whether they have kneecapped Iran’s nuclear program, as U.S. officials have claimed — experts say the feasibility of a similar attack against North Korea is much smaller.
“North Korea has been plowing through with their nuclear program for some time, so their security posture around their nuclear facilities is far more sophisticated than Iran,” Kim Dong-yup said. “Their facilities are extremely dispersed and well-disguised, which means it’s difficult to cripple their nuclear program, even if you were to successfully destroy the one or two sites that are known.”
Kim Dong-yup believes that North Korea’s enrichment facilities are much deeper than Iran’s and potentially beyond the range of the “bunker buster” bombs — officially known as the GBU-57 A/B — used Sunday. And unlike Iran, North Korea is believed to already have 40 to 50 nuclear warheads, making large-scale retaliation a very real possibility.
A preemptive strike against North Korea would also do irreparable damage to the U.S.-South Korea alliance and would likely also invite responses from China and, more significantly, Russia.
A mutual defense treaty signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un last June states that the two countries “shall immediately provide military and other assistance” to the other if it “falls into a state of war due to armed invasion from an individual or multiple states.”
Yet talk of such an attack in Trump’s first term was soon replaced by what he has described as a friendship with Kim Jong Un, built over the 2018-19 summits, the first ever such meetings by a sitting U.S. president. Though the talks fell apart over disagreements on what measures North Korea would take toward disarmament and Trump’s reluctance to offer sanctions relief, the summits ended on a surprisingly hopeful note, with the two leaders walking away as pen pals.
An undated photo provided on Sept. 13 by the North Korean government shows its leader, Kim Jong Un, center, visiting what the country says is a facility for nuclear materials in an undisclosed location in North Korea.
(Associated Press)
In recent months, administration officials have said that the president’s goal remains the same: completely denuclearizing North Korea.
But the attack on Iran has made those old sticking points — such as the U.S. negotiating team’s demand that North Korea submit a full list of its nuclear sites — even more onerous, said Lee Byong-chul, a nonproliferation expert who has served under two South Korean administrations.
“Kim Jong Un will only give up his nuclear weapons when, as the English expression goes, hell freezes over,” Lee said. “And that alone shuts the door on any possible deal.”
Still, Lee believes that North Korea may be willing to come back to the negotiating table for a freeze — though not a rollback — of its nuclear program.
“But from Trump’s perspective, that’s a retreat from the terms he presented at the [2019] Hanoi summit,” he said. “He would look like a fool to come back to sign a reduced deal.”
While some, like Kim Dong-yup, the professor, argue that North Korea has already proven itself capable of withstanding economic sanctions and will not overextend itself to have them removed, others point out that this is still the United States’ primary source of leverage — and that if Trump wants a deal, he will need to put it on the table.
“Real sanctions relief is still valuable,” Stephen Costello, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington-based think tank.
While he agrees that immediate denuclearization may be unrealistic, Costello has argued that even halting production of new fissile material, nuclear weapons and long-range missiles are “well worth ending nonmilitary sanctions,” such as those on energy imports or the export of textiles and seafood.
“Regardless of U.S. actions in the Middle East, the North Koreans would likely gauge any U.S. interest by how serious they are about early, immediate sanctions relief,” he said.
The attack on Iran will have other ramifications beyond Trump’s dealmaking with Kim Jong Un.
Military cooperation between North Korea and Iran, dating back to the 1980s and including arms transfers from North Korea to Iran, will likely accelerate.
Lee, the nonproliferation expert, said that the attack on Iran, which was the first real-world use of the United States’ bunker-buster bombs, may have been a boon to North Korea.
“It’s going to be a tremendous lesson for them,” he said. “Depending on what the total damage sustained is, North Korea will undoubtedly use that information to better conceal their own nuclear facilities.”
