True North?

In “North Korea as It Is” (May/June 2026), Victor Cha recasts three decades of diplomacy as a strategic failure and claims that North Korean leaders were uniformly deceitful and “determined to build a nuclear arsenal at any cost.” But Cha’s narrative of futility is wrong.

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Beginning in the early 1990s, North Korea was prepared to bargain away its nuclear program after South Korea normalized relations with Russia and China. Lacking friends and worried about its vulnerabilities, Pyongyang offered to gradually denuclearize in return for U.S. actions to improve relations, such as lifting sanctions. Although Washington frequently insisted on front-loaded steps toward denuclearization and delayed relief, when the two sides compromised, they were able to sign accords such as the 1994 Agreed Framework.

But the United States often over-estimated its coercive ability and under-estimated Pyongyang’s resolve to safeguard its security in case diplomacy failed. That mistake became obvious when Kim Jong Un took power in 2011 and accelerated the country’s weapons programs. At the Hanoi summit with Kim in 2019, U.S. President Donald Trump had a chance to stem the tide, but he grew impatient and walked out before lunch on the second day.

South Korea also contributed to this failure. Presidents Kim Dae-jung, Roh Moo-hyun, and Moon Jae-in built frameworks to engage the north,but in each case, their respective conservative successors dismantled that progress. From Pyongyang’s vantage point, no commitment by Seoul carries weight beyond a single electoral cycle.

The Korean Peninsula today is more dangerous than at any point in three decades. It is important to understand what really happened to learn what to do in the future. Cha’s simplistic history doesn’t serve that purpose.

Washington can no longer count on North Korea’s near-term denuclearization because Pyongyang has embedded nuclear expansion in its constitutional identity, legal doctrine, and operational planning. Instead, Cha argues, the United States should pursue a cold peace focused on reducing risks to its homeland and preventing escalation.

But a cold peace for Washington could create hot risk for Seoul. Such a bargain would undermine the credibility of the U.S.–South Koreanalliance, intensify regional nuclear anxiety, and ultimately damage U.S. interests. If dialogues with North Korea prioritize the security of the United States over South Korea’s frontline vulnerabilities, Pyongyang will exploit that divide by targeting Seoul with nuclear posturing,limited attacks, and “gray zone” coercion—such as cyber-operations and naval harassment—that tests deterrence without reaching the threshold of full-scale war.

Serious negotiations would require consultation with Seoul and the credible threat of the U.S. extended nuclear deterrent. Joint U.S.–South Korean military exercises, regional missile defenses, Seoul’s preemptive defense plans, and the American troop presence on the Korean Peninsula should not become bargaining chips. And any deal should include a commitment from Pyongyang to respect human rights—not as a moral add-on but as a requirement for success. Reducing pressure on North Korea while neglecting repression, forced labor, and information control would only entrench the Kim regime.

A realistic U.S. strategy must do more than manage crises. It must avoid shifting danger from Washington to Seoul. A true cold peace requires a regional order sustained by deterrence, diplomacy, and bilateral and multilateral allied cooperation.

U.S. policy seeking to denuclearize North Korea has failed because it attacks a symptom while leaving the underlying ailment untouched. That ailment is the division of the Korean Peninsula and the existence of a North Korean regime that believes nuclear weapons guarantee its survival. A free and unified Korea is the only durable path to peninsular peace, human rights, and the elimination of the nuclear threat.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities are much more advanced today than they were three decades ago, when the first negotiations to end Pyongyang’s nuclear program took place. But the policies that Cha advocates won’t reverse this course.

Conventional wisdom holds that unification would be not only impracticable but also prohibitively costly. In reality, as we wrote in a report published earlier this year by the National Institute for Public Policy, adopting unification as the strategic end state of U.S.–South Korean policy is achievable and essential to national security. Such an approach would emphasize promoting human rights, economic integration, and civil society engagement.

A unified Korea that is democratic, free of nuclear weapons, and economically integrated would serve the long-term strategic interests of Koreans, Americans, and U.S. alliances in Asia. The question is not whether the status quo can be managed better. It is whether the United States and its partners have the will to envision and support a new future for Korea.

The cold peace with North Korea that I propose rests on three arguments. Washington’s preoccupation with denuclearization has precluded interim negotiations that could decrease the growing threat to the American homeland. The absence of arms control dialogues or crisis hotlines between Washington and Pyongyang endangers Japan and South Korea, as well as the United States. And practical management of relations with North Korea in the short term is not necessarily the same as a permanent solution.

Choi Jong Kun and Joel Wit argue that I have incorrectly absolved the United States of responsibility for failed diplomacy with North Korea. This reflects a belief that Washington can solve any problem it focuses on, and that the cause of failure is U.S. partisanship, not Pyongyang. Neither is true. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have made earnest diplomatic efforts to achieve denuclearization, but neither succeeded because North Korea was never willing to abandon its nuclear program. It is also hard to imagine that a paranoid North Korea would have permanently surrendered the entirety of its nascent nuclear weapons program to the United States—its number one enemy—for a verbal security assurance and permission to develop civil nuclear energy projects.

Lee Shin-wha suggests that a cold peace would neglect the interests of U.S. allies, especially South Korea. The notion that Washington’s pursuit of arms control with Pyongyang would be tantamount to abandoning Seoul defies the logic of deterrence. Reducing the threat of intercontinental ballistic missiles to the American homeland enhances South Korean security by ensuring that Pyongyang could not hold U.S. cities hostage if Washington were to come to Seoul’s defense. Moreover, reducing the number of U.S. ground troops on the Korean Peninsula (but not fully withdrawing them) retains the most important element of deterrence: direct involvement. If North Korea attacks, Americans would still be in the line of fire.

Unification could achieve denuclearization in theory, provided that a united Korea would give up the arsenal it would inherit. But proponents of unification fail to explain how to get there. The strategy I propose does not preclude the unification that Nicholas Eberstadt, Robert Joseph, and David Maxwell endorse. I view a cold peace as an interim solution designed to address a nuclear threat that is metastasizing right now. U.S. policy correctly calls for a Korea that is whole and free—that is, united and democratic. The policies I propose are just as likely to achieve that outcome as an ineffective denuclearization or sanctions policy, and they would reduce risks in the meantime.

Policy choices are always relative. If not a cold peace, what is the alternative? Staying stuck on denuclearization, blaming the problem on partisan politics, or advocating unification will neither stifle North Korea’s nuclear program nor keep the United States or its allies safe.

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