SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Jong-un toured a new nuclear fuel facility, state media reported Thursday, the latest symbolic and highly public evidence of North Korea’s decades of defiance of international denuclearization pressures led by the U.S.
North Korea’s relentless drive to become a nuclear power casts a glaring light on policy failures by Washington, Seoul and other actors. Every effort to stymie North Korea’s nuclear arms programs has flopped despite endless negotiations and a U.N.-backed international sanctions regime.
Moon Chung-in, a prominent South Korean academic, argues for nullifying the long-held denuclearization position. Instead, he urges Seoul and Washington to reengage Pyongyang by pivoting to arms control talks and reopening communication channels frozen since 2019.
Yet that approach faces multiple hurdles in the U.S.
Kim’s calculation
North Korea is thought to be enriching uranium at three sites: Yangbyon, Kangson and Kusong. It was unclear from state media whether Mr. Kim visited one of these or a new facility.
Images showed him being briefed by officials in suits as he walked between rows of equipment. He was also shown watching officials working on computers.
Mr. Kim released “action guidelines” designed to rapidly accelerate “qualitative and quantitative” upgrades to weapons of mass destruction. He also revealed an “ambitious future plan designed to beef up our state’s nuclear forces at an exponential rate.”
Since its first nuclear test in 2006, North Korea has amassed fissile materials that the International Atomic Energy Agency deemed in April 2025 to be sufficient for “dozens” of warheads.
It has also mastered most technologies required to land intercontinental ballistic missiles in the continental U.S. and is upgrading launch systems’ mobility and survivability.
North Korean ICBMs are mobile, mounted on giant transporter-erector-launchers. Other creative assets include launchers bolted to train flatbeds that can be activated after exiting tunnel entrances, and missiles fired from beneath the surface of lakes.
Pyongyang claims to have built a nuclear-armed underwater drone and is working on a nuclear submarine.
Dubbed a “sacred sword” domestically, Mr. Kim’s weapons of mass destruction program has all but bulletproofed the regime against external assaults suffered by states such as Iraq and Libya, which ditched weapons of mass destruction, and Ukraine, which returned inherited Soviet nuclear weapons under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.
Key pressure tactics aimed at Pyongyang are now seriously weakened.
The Ukraine war has rendered the U.N. Security Council meaningless, as neither China nor Russia enforces sanctions. Moreover, with Moscow repaying Pyongyang for military assistance, North Korea’s long economic isolation has eased.
Given all this, a rethink is overdue, Mr. Moon insists.
Time to recalibrate
Writing in South Korea’s leading liberal newspaper, The Hankyoreh, on Sunday, Mr. Moon argued for “managing nuclear risk.”
He urged the U.S. to drop the goal of complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization and instead refocus on “arms control, arms reduction and nonproliferation.”
He advised Washington to dangle incentives, such as sanctions relief and diplomatic normalization, to secure a nuclear freeze, and for Mr. Kim and President Trump to return to their 2018-2019 summitry.
Mr. Moon advised prior Seoul administrations on engagement with North Korea, and he traveled north with southern delegations. The Hankyoreh is widely read by liberals, who form the backbone of President Lee Jae-myung’s administration.
Mr. Moon acknowledged that his ideas have significant barriers. Changing a long-established mindset is difficult in Washington. The American goal of complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization, he said, “has become a kind of belief system in Washington. … It won’t be easy to change.”
Another difficulty U.S. officialdom faces is convincing Americans they must accept a nuclear “Kimdom.”
North Korea — a state that offers hardly any rights or freedoms for its citizens, operates totalitarian surveillance mechanisms and is run like a neo-monarchy by a family that often appears cartoonish — is widely demonized in America.
Hollywood has historically led the charge. In 2002’s “Die Another Day,” James Bond took on a North Korean villain; the 2013 thriller “Olympus Has Fallen” featured North Korean commandos storming the White House; and the 2014 stoner comedy “The Interview” satirized Mr. Kim.
More recently, the 2025 movie “A House of Dynamite” depicted a nuclear strike on Chicago by an unidentified adversary, with North Korea among the suspects. The 2024 book “Nuclear War: A Scenario” explored a similar theme.
“Americans love to create enemies, monsters,” Mr. Moon said. “Even State Department officials tend to see it this way, and think the only way to change … behavior is hard-line, hawkish engagement.”
America’s approach is grounded in deterrence and compellence, he said. Although the former is understandable, he warned against the latter, given its failure thus far in the current conflict.
“We should learn a lesson from Iran,” Mr. Moon said. “It does not have nuclear weapons, but U.S. compellence is not changing its behavior and is creating a lot of victims.”
While Mr. Moon’s proposal gets a hearing in Seoul, he has critics across the Pacific.
Washington, diplomatically and legally committed to nonproliferation protocols, cannot simply U-turn on North Korea.
Denuclearization “is a requirement under 11 U.N. resolutions as well as U.S. law,” said Bruce Klingner, a North Korea watcher at think tank the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation. “To adopt an arms control-only approach would be in opposition to those regulations and laws which provide the basis for many of the sanctions imposed on North Korea.”
Past form indicates Mr. Kim would reject necessary arms control protocols.
“There are no indications that Pyongyang would accept any limits on its nuclear programs,” said Mr. Klingner, who has served with the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency. “Even an arms-control agreement would require intrusive verification measures that Pyongyang has rejected. You can’t freeze what you can’t see.”
He said the U.S., if it ventures down the arms control path, might alienate allies Japan and South Korea by focusing its efforts only on ICBMs, which threaten America, rather than the shorter-range missiles that target Tokyo and Seoul.
Like Mr. Moon, he hoped for renewed talks with North Korea. However, he was not upbeat.
“Despite the failure of numerous nuclear agreements, more than 250 inter-Korean agreements, etc., the U.S. and its allies should always strive for engagement,” Mr. Klingner said. “But Pyongyang’s repeated rejections, including of a personal letter from Mr. Trump, do not bode well.”
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