Striking a nuclear deal with North Korea is the most courageous foreign policy project left unfinished from President Donald Trump’s first term. The arc from war scare and “fire and fury” to détente and “love letters” stretched over three years until its engagement phase was derailed by the failed Hanoi summit and the onset of Covid-19. Six years on, statements by the White House and the Kim regime indicate a willingness to return to talks. That is welcome, because progress toward establishing a stable U.S.–DPRK relationship remains in the interests of both sides, even accounting for the dramatic improvement in the North’s international position since 2021.
The South Korean president Lee Jae Myung’s visit to Washington last week would have been a good opportunity for the White House to begin to adopt a new approach. Frontloading heavy demands on denuclearization foreclosed progress on other worthy issues in 2018–2019. To make headway in 2025, the U.S. must shift from “denuclearization first” to “regular engagement first,” and accept that complete denuclearization is a long-run aspiration. Trump should pitch the North on an interim deal that couples three public unilateral U.S. concessions with a private offer of sanctions relief calibrated to verifiable limits on the North’s fissile material production.
Kim Jong Un’s reciprocation is never guaranteed, but it is in America’s interests to broaden his horizons beyond fighting Russia’s war against Ukraine, international cybercrime, and untrammeled development of nuclear missiles that can strike the United States.
The 2019 Hanoi summit, the last substantive high-level U.S.–DPRK meeting, was meant to implement the four aspirations of the 2018 Singapore Joint Statement: establishing a new U.S.–DPRK relationship, building a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula, working toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and repatriating the remains of American soldiers who died in the Korean War. Pending a leader-level accord on denuclearization, both sides were reportedly ready to make unprecedented progress on the other three goals by signing agreements declaring a symbolic end to the Korean War, establishing liaison offices in each other’s capitals, facilitating economic investment, and repatriating remains of more U.S. soldiers.
But talks on denuclearization quickly collapsed. Trump walked away from a DPRK offer to dismantle at least part of its Yongbyon plutonium and enriched uranium facility and formally halt nuclear and missile testing in exchange for the lifting of all post-2016 UN sanctions on its civilian economy. The U.S. position began with a demand for the North to freeze and dismantle all its nuclear production facilities—not only Yongbyon—in a definite period in exchange for relief from the UN sanctions. At some point the U.S. side reportedly increased its demand to include total relinquishment of North Korea’s nuclear program, including all facilities and all weapons. This “Libya model” offer bore the imprint of John Bolton, Trump’s then-National Security Advisor, and was probably designed to sabotage the talks, since Kim certainly knew of Muammar Gaddafi’s grisly death less than a decade after he relinquished his nuclear program.
Trump and Kim both gambled that the magic of a leader-level summit would allow them to achieve sweeping goals. Each devalued pre-summit talks that could have produced a more incremental, more achievable deal. Kim refused to even authorize his working level diplomats to discuss denuclearization. And the White House went ahead with the summit knowing a viable deal was not on the table.
What is unclear from the public record is the extent to which either side, facing maximalist requests, toned down their own position to try bridge the gap. That incremental approach, which tends to de-emphasize the goal of complete denuclearization, is the best path forward.
North Korea’s willingness and capacity to harm U.S. interests is now greater than ever. Its arsenal of warheads has reportedly grown from 15 to 50 since 2016 and it is estimated to have sufficient fissile material for 40 more. It continues to test and refine ICBM designs that can strike the continental U.S., including solid-fueled models that can be dispersed and launched at short notice. North Korea’s geopolitical ambit has also spread to Europe. It has sold Russia billions of dollars’ worth of ammunition to support its war effort in Ukraine. In June 2024 Russia and North Korea signed a mutual defense treaty, and 15,000 North Korean soldiers were sent to fight in Russia’s Kursk region. In return, Russia has granted the country access to advanced missile and reconnaissance technologies. At the same time, Russia and China have relaxed their enforcement of the post-2016 UN sanctions, reducing pressure on the North’s civilian economy.
Kim also reversed the North–South détente of 2018–2020. He amended the DPRK constitution to designate South Korea as a “hostile state” and formally abandoned the goal of eventual reunification. He also destroyed rail and road links with the South and withdrew from an inter-Korean military risk reduction agreement. The Korean Peninsula has returned to the restive, deterrence-first equilibrium Americans accept as normal. But normalcy carries a cost: the supposed requirements of peninsular deterrence commit the U.S. to an indefinite 28,000-troop onshore deployment with little relevance to America’s broader imperative of sustaining a regional balance of power with China.
The U.S. can give itself the opportunity to reach mutually-beneficial agreements with North Korea on these issues, but only if it stops conditioning all sustained progress on sweeping, upfront DPRK moves toward denuclearization. The events of the past six years have greatly improved Kim’s negotiating position, but his main goal is still to transform the economic conditions of North Korea. As John Delury notes, there are intrinsic limits on Russia’s ability to provide that transformation and Kim refuses to sacrifice North Korea’s strategic autonomy in exchange for massive Chinese investment. It is therefore not surprising the North is keeping the door open to talks with the U.S. Notably, it has not abandoned the 2018 Singapore Statement, and in July, Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, described the relationship between her brother and Trump as “not bad.”
In the aftermath of the 2019 Hanoi summit, North Korea’s then–Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho justified Kim’s partial offer concerning Yongbyon, saying “this proposal was the biggest denuclearization measure we could take at the present stage in relations to the current level of confidence between the DPRK and the United States.” Confidence is the most precious commodity in the North’s calculations of what it can offer. The American side values confidence as well, but North Korea’s tiny margin of security means its representatives will always value it more. The United States can afford to be duped. The North cannot. Since it is less risky for the U.S. to make unilateral concessions, the onus is on the U.S. side to take the first confidence-building steps.
In 2018, Trump made an unprecedented and courageous gesture by meeting Kim in person in Singapore. In 2025, he should make another with a public speech inviting Kim back to talks to implement the goals of the Singapore Statement, but this time making clear the U.S. prioritizes the establishment of a regular and constructive U.S.–DPRK relationship over precipitous progress on denuclearization. To serve that end, the President should unilaterally suspend military exercises near the Korean Peninsula for one year and ask the North to reciprocate with a moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile testing. He should also unconditionally offer to sign a joint declaration of the end of the Korean War and establish reciprocal liaison offices in Pyongyang and Washington, DC. These moves would advance the interests of all parties by enabling the creation of a newly constructive baseline of politics on the Korean Peninsula. The US would lose nothing if the North refused to reciprocate.
Privately, Trump should pitch Kim on an incremental and open-ended denuclearization process beginning with an offer of a year-long partial suspension of the post-2016 UN sanctions in exchange for Kim’s 2019 offer to verifiably deactivate and dismantle the Yongbyon plutonium and enriched uranium facilities. The extent to which that year-long suspension is extended or made permanent should depend on verifiable progress on the ground. The U.S. should table similarly-structured offers for the declaration and deactivation of nuclear material facilities other than Yongbyon, a permanent moratorium on testing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, and a DPRK commitment to abide by international export controls on nuclear material and missiles.
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This approach holds the promise of establishing a regularized U.S.–DPRK relationship, capping the number of nuclear weapons the DPRK can build, ending its ability to improve its missile and warhead designs through testing, and committing it not to share its nuclear know-how with the world—all while still enshrining denuclearization as the eventual end goal. It would also align with the preferences of the South Korean government, which recently announced its support for “phased denuclearization.”
An interim deal would leave the North in possession of its current nuclear arsenal for the foreseeable future. But that is a concession to reality, not reckless appeasement of a dictatorship. The North will have its weapons with or without a deal. The decisive fact is that sustained, regular engagement with the North serves U.S. interests better than the status quo and it would establish a basis for further progress in the future. That opportunity is worth a bold American gesture.
The author is grateful to Jimin Park for his valuable research assistance on this piece.
