With the clear result that former President Donald Trump will be returning to the White House, there is likely to be speculation that Trump will try to restart talks with North Korea over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. While engaging North Korea on these issues would be prudent, a second Trump administration is likely to find engaging North Korea more complex this time.
The first Trump administration had advantages in its initial “maximum pressure” approach to North Korea that the incoming Trump administration will not. In a November 2017 speech to the National Assembly in Seoul, Trump laid out the outlines of what a maximum pressure strategy would look like:
We call on every nation, including China and Russia, to fully implement U.N. Security Council resolutions, downgrade diplomatic relations with the regime, and sever all ties of trade and technology. It is our responsibility and our duty to confront this danger together, because the longer we wait, the greater the danger grows and the fewer the options become.
At the time, Russia and China were cooperative in increasing pressure on North Korea and supported three resolutions in the U.N. Security Council that banned many of North Korea’s exports and placed caps on the levels of petroleum the regime could import.
However, each of the elements Trump laid out in Seoul no longer apply. We now know that shortly after the talks in Hanoi failed, China and Russia became uninterested in enforcing sanctions. While North Korea’s licit trade with China and Russia is still well below pre-sanctions levels, the illicit side of the ledger has grown significantly. In terms of severing diplomatic and technological ties, Russia and North Korea have deepened diplomatic ties and are engaging in technological collaboration.
In essence, U.S. negotiating leverage has weakened while North Korea’s position has strengthened. Any dialogue process with Pyongyang would be much different in nature than the initial Trump administration talks.
Any future talks with North Korea will need to overcome three obstacles. The first obstacle is North Korea’s own level of interest. In public statements, North Korea has downplayed the possibility of dialogue, but that could be public posturing. Ri Il Kyu, who defected late last year from North Korea’s Embassy in Cuba, has suggested that the regime is preparing for renewed talks.
However, given Trump’s decision to walk out on Kim in Hanoi and the additional options it has gained since – the most prominent of which is its relationship with Russia – bringing North Korea to the table could be complicated. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the relationship has only deepened. After Kim and Putin met in September 2023, Russia and North Korea agreed to deepen cooperation in the areas of economy, science, and technology. This cooperation has expanded with Russia’s veto of the extension of the U.N. Panel of Experts mandate, effectively ending international sanctions monitoring of North Korea; their new defense pact, and Russia saying North Korea’s missile tests are “legitimate.”
The most significant benefits for North Korea, however, come from its direct support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. Estimates suggest that North Korea has provided Russia with 9 million artillery shells, ballistic missiles such as the KN-23, and now upwards of 10,000 North Korean troops. North Korea has likely earned $4.3 billion from its shipments of artillery to Russia alone, and could earn over $21 million a month from its deployment of troops to Russia, if North Korea is being compensated similarly to newly recruited Russian troops.
In addition to what North Korea earns from Russia for providing weapons and troops, the Financial Times has reported that Russia is providing technology to aid North Korea’s missile programs. Given reported 50 percent failure rates of the KN-23 on the battlefield in Ukraine, Russia is likely working with North Korea to improve its ballistic missile technology.
Given the benefits of North Korea’s relationship with Russia, any effort to restore talks would either need to present North Korea with benefits beyond what it could gain from Russia or find a way to severe the relationship between the two countries.
It is unlikely that Trump would want to put more on the table than Russia, since ending the war in Ukraine would change the nature of North Korea’s relationship with Russia. In that context, the incoming Trump administration could make Russia ending its support North Korea one of the conditions for U.S. efforts to bring Ukraine to the bargaining table. However, given Trump’s clear preference for the war to end, the United States may not have leverage to secure a complete severing of ties. Rather, an end to military cooperation may be the most likely outcome, with Moscow continuing to ignore U.N. sanctions and developing its relationship with North Korea in other areas – something that to a significant extent would be achieved with the war’s end either way.
Convincing Russia to isolate North Korea is not sufficient if China is not cooperative. While reports suggest that Beijing is unhappy with the growing ties between Moscow and Pyongyang, gaining China’s support for a return to pressure on North Korea is complicated by China-U.S. competition. Without China’s cooperation North Korea would be able to continue to avoid economic pressure and have a lifeline to the components it needs to continue the development and production of its ballistic missiles.
Depending on the level of support that China and Russia are willing to provide North Korea, the incoming Trump administration could face a North Korea under dwindling diplomatic and economic pressure that continues to improve and grow its weapons programs. That limited leverage means that any future talks with North Korea will be more troublesome than they were during the first Trump administration, with Pyongyang enjoying a greater ability to limit its concessions.