The DPRK of 2025 is fundamentally different – and far more dangerous – than when Trump last met Kim Jong Un.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent declaration that he would “work very hard with Kim Jong Un” to bring peace to the Korean Peninsula felt like an echo from a bygone era. The remark, made upon Trump’s arrival in South Korea in late October for a state visit with President Lee Jae-myung, confirmed that a reunion with Kim was not logistically possible during the trip.
Yet the pageantry surrounding the Lee-Trump summit – from the conferral of the Grand Order of Mugunghwa to praise for Trump’s “wonderful skills as a peacemaker” – recalled the high-stakes theater of 2018 and 2019. That period of personal outreach briefly redefined the global perception of North Korea-U.S. relations.
But the Korean Peninsula of 2025 bears little resemblance to that earlier moment. In the intervening years, Pyongyang has constitutionally codified itself as a nuclear-armed state, deepened strategic cooperation with Russia, and tightened ideological control at home. Kim Jong Un’s nuclear deterrent is no longer a bargaining chip but the constitutional foundation and non-negotiable guarantor of his regime’s legitimacy. For Trump, pursuing “peace” on this new terrain means engaging a North Korea that regards denuclearization not as a negotiable objective but as a direct threat to its sovereignty.
Trump’s renewed talk of reconciliation, therefore, underscores the widening gap between political nostalgia and geopolitical reality. His appeal to peacemaking now unfolds in the shadow of a North Korea that has institutionalized the very nuclear capability Washington once sought to trade away. While the image of summitry remains powerful – handshakes, border crossings, symbolic gestures – the substance beneath it has hardened into strategic permanence.
From Summits to Stalemate (2018–2019)
Trump’s first round of summit diplomacy with Kim remains a defining chapter in North Korea-U.S. relations. The 2018 Singapore meeting broke a seven-decade presidential precedent, projecting a vision of a reconciliation anchored on the “complete denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula. It produced striking imagery and a four-point declaration emphasizing peace and new relations.
Yet the early optimism soon collided with marked asymmetries of expectation. Washington demanded complete and verifiable disarmament, while Pyongyang sought reciprocal concessions – chiefly, sanctions relief and security guarantees. The 2019 Hanoi summit exposed these gaps. Kim offered to dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear complex in exchange for the lifting of key sanctions – a proposal that fell well short of U.S. expectations. Trump ended the talks abruptly, remarking, “Sometimes you have to walk.” For Pyongyang, Hanoi confirmed that Washington would not reward incremental steps; for Washington, it reinforced doubts about Kim’s willingness to ever fully denuclearize.
The impromptu DMZ meeting that summer – and Trump’s symbolic step across the line at Panmunjom – briefly revived hopes of renewed dialogue, but no substantive negotiations followed. Within months, Kim declared that North Korea was no longer bound by its April 2018 self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile testing, signaling the end of restraint. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent U.S. political transition then froze diplomacy entirely, cementing a protracted stalemate.
These encounters left a durable, two-sided legacy. Kim learned that nuclear capability ensures regime survival and that summitry can yield global stature without material compromise. For Washington, the outcome was sobering. It showed that personal diplomacy can command global attention, but without verifiable concessions, it cannot alter North Korea’s strategic calculus.
Institutionalizing the Bomb
Since the collapse of the Kim-Trump talks, North Korea has undergone an important internal transformation. The failure of the 2019 Hanoi summit did not push Kim Jong Un toward compromise; it hardened his conviction that nuclear weapons are the only reliable guarantor of regime survival. That conviction has since been codified in both law and ideology.
In September 2022, Pyongyang enacted a law that designated the nation a “responsible nuclear weapons state” and authorized automatic retaliation if its command structure is attacked. One year later, a constitutional amendment enshrined this doctrine: Article 58 now defines North Korea as a “committed nuclear state” that will “accelerate the development of nuclear weapons” to guarantee its existence and deter war. Together, these measures elevate nuclear arms from instruments of deterrence to constitutional pillars of sovereignty. This language deliberately echoes Juche-era ideals of self-reliance and enduring strength.
By “constitutionalizing” the bomb, Kim closed the door on any negotiation premised on denuclearization. The political cost of surrendering the arsenal has become existential. Relinquishing it would violate the state’s founding charter and unravel the leadership’s mythos of defiance. To sustain this shift, Kim’s directives since late 2023 have channeled resources into the munitions base and machine-building sectors, with multiple assessments noting that defense industries now drive a significant portion of the country’s economic activity. Reporting in 2025 on factory automation and serial production, including Kim’s inspections of “automated” missile lines, further illustrates the acceleration.
The ideological outcome is a state that equates popular hardship with nuclear strength, with suffering redefined as sacrifice for sovereignty. This tightening of ideological control has had tangible external effects. South Korea’s humanitarian assistance to North Korea fell to zero in 2024 – the first complete halt since 1995 – amid Pyongyang’s refusal to accept most outside aid. By rejecting assistance, the regime reinforces a posture of isolation that preserves ideological purity and total narrative control. In this environment, diplomacy that demands disarmament is politically impossible. Any U.S. effort to revive denuclearization as a negotiating baseline now collides directly with Pyongyang’s constitutional and ideological reality.
Realignment With Russia
As North Korea entrenched its nuclear posture at home, it simultaneously recalibrated its external alignments. Since 2023, the revival of its partnership with Russia has reshaped regional dynamics, providing Pyongyang with both material lifelines and political insulation from international isolation. North Korea has reemerged as a transactional actor in Moscow’s long confrontation with the West.
Widely documented arms transfers to Russia, including artillery shells, rockets, and short-range ballistic missiles, serve a critical strategic function for Kim Jong Un. In exchange for munitions, Pyongyang receives cash, fuel, food, and advanced military technology, including satellite and missile development. These exchanges have created a Cold War-style symbiosis: Moscow gains a steady supply of conventional ordnance for its war in Ukraine, while Pyongyang secures diplomatic cover at the United Nations and renewed technological lifelines for its own weapons programs.
This new axis has also altered the structural balance of North Korea’s external relationships. By deepening ties with Russia, Kim has reduced dependence on Beijing and expanded his room for maneuver. China remains North Korea’s dominant trading partner, accounting for more than 90 percent of total commerce, but its political leverage has waned as Pyongyang has diversified its sources of support. In practical terms, Kim no longer needs dialogue with Washington to guarantee regime survival. The deterrence triad of nuclear permanence, Russian backing, and consolidated domestic control now provides sufficient confidence for continued defiance.
The consequences extend beyond the peninsula. North Korea’s growing military cooperation with Russia has undermined international sanctions enforcement, accelerated its technological advancement, and demonstrated to other authoritarian regimes that nuclear armaments can coexist with partial diplomatic rehabilitation. Kim’s participation in this emerging coalition of convenience situates Pyongyang within a broader anti-Western network that rewards resistance and deters punishment.
In this environment, Trump’s renewed bid to engage with Kim Jong Un faces a leader operating from a position of greater security, legitimacy, and external support than at any time since his grandfather’s rule. Engagement remains possible, though only on Pyongyang’s terms.
What Future Engagement Could Look Like
If renewed diplomacy is to serve any practical purpose, it must begin by abandoning the fiction that denuclearization is achievable in the near term. Recognizing this reality does not mean accepting North Korea’s arsenal as legitimate; it means reorienting diplomacy from abolition toward management.
Future engagement should prioritize reducing the risks of miscalculation, escalation, and accidental conflict. This strategic pivot requires two parallel efforts: restoring communication channels and pursuing incremental arms control. The first step is to reestablish the basic contact mechanisms that have been dismantled since 2019: military hotlines, liaison offices, and humanitarian coordination frameworks. Even modest exchanges, such as discussions on repatriating remains, deconfliction protocols in the West Sea, or public health cooperation, could serve as practical starting points for rebuilding trust at the working level.
Washington and Seoul might also explore a phased arms control framework tailored to the peninsula’s realities. Such an approach would not demand nuclear surrender but would seek verifiable restraints on specific activities: testing, fissile material production, or missile deployment patterns. This kind of risk-reduction diplomacy echoes early Soviet-U.S. precedents: the 1958-61 voluntary test moratorium, the 1963 Washington-Moscow “hotline,” and the 1971 agreement on measures to reduce the risk of nuclear war. Each was an incremental step that paved the way for later, more formal arms-control accords. Stability, not idealism, was the necessary foundation for sustained dialogue.
For such an approach to succeed, allied coordination must remain steady. The United States and South Korea will need to calibrate expectations carefully, ensuring that humanitarian gestures are not mistaken for strategic concessions. At the same time, Washington must prepare domestic audiences for a sobering truth: peace on the Korean Peninsula is likely to mean containing danger, not resolving conflict.
Beyond Illusions of Peace
While Trump’s renewed language of peacemaking may evoke nostalgia for the summit diplomacy of his first term, the North Korea of 2025 is a fundamentally different – and far more dangerous – state. The conditions that once made engagement possible are no longer in place. Pyongyang has institutionalized, by its own design, a permanent and non-negotiable nuclear status: it has enshrined nuclear weapons at the core of its governing ideology, declared its armed posture “irreversible,” and accelerated expansion with renewed intensity.
This institutional permanence is now matched by a rapidly advancing arsenal and delivery system. In June 2025, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated that North Korea had assembled roughly 50 warheads and possessed enough fissile material for about 40 more. That trajectory is consistent with Kim’s November 2024 call for a “limitless” expansion of the nuclear program.
North Korea’s nuclear deterrent has also now become operationally diverse. Over the past two years, Pyongyang has tested a full spectrum of ballistic systems, from short- and intermediate-range missiles capable of striking regional targets to new solid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missiles designed for rapid launch and survivability. The September 2023 launch of the Hero Kim Kun Ok, a modified Romeo-class ballistic-missile submarine equipped with ten vertical launch hatches, introduces a nascent second-strike potential. Together, these developments transform North Korea’s deterrent from a political instrument into a mature, integrated force structure with both regional and intercontinental reach.
In this altered landscape, Trump’s pledge to “work very hard with Kim Jong Un” reflects optimism against a geopolitical reality that has fundamentally changed. The long-held vision of a denuclearized Korean Peninsula has yielded to the permanence of a nuclear North Korea. Policy must adapt to this new reality. Since threat derives from both capability and intent, Washington is more likely to influence Pyongyang’s intent to use nuclear weapons than to dismantle its existing arsenal.
Trump and Kim may one day share the stage again, but if so, they will be speaking across a greater divide. North Korea now defines its legitimacy through nuclear permanence rather than diplomatic engagement. The brief window for a grand bargain on denuclearization has long closed. Any future dialogue will be a sober exercise in managing the limits of power, and the ever-deepening shadow cast by the bomb.
