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WASHINGTON – In the four years since President Donald J. Trump’s leader-to-leader diplomacy with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un collapsed after a failed meeting in Hanoi, the North’s nuclear arsenal has grown rapidly, according to American and South Korean officials. admitting he had stopped trying to keep an accurate count.
North Korea’s missile tests are so frequent that they get more shrugs than headlines in Seoul.
So when President Biden welcomes President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea to the White House on Wednesday, only Mr. Biden’s second presidential visit, there will be few pretenses that disarming North Korea remains a credible goal.
However, American officials said, Mr. Biden’s clearest commitment to Mr. Yoon will focus on what arms control experts call “extended deterrence,” adding that America’s nuclear arsenal will be used, if necessary, to deter or respond to the North. South Korean nuclear attack.
The emphasis on deterrence is a striking recognition that all other efforts over the past thirty years to rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear program, including diplomatic persuasion, crushing sanctions and episodic promises of development aid, have all failed. It is also intended to tamp down the many calls in South Korea for its own arsenal, in the very remote chance that North Korea will make a suicidal decision to use nuclear weapons.
Arsenal North will not be the only topic discussed during Mr Yoon’s visit. He and Mr. Biden will also celebrate the 70th anniversary of the alliance between their countries, a commitment to more South Korean investment in semiconductor manufacturing and plans to strengthen Seoul’s ties with Japan.
But the rapid expansion of North Korea’s capabilities is a subject of mutual concern for both countries. At a recent security conference organized by the Harvard Korea Project, several experts said they believed Mr. Kim’s goal was to approach the size of Britain’s and France’s weapons, which each have 200 to 300 weapons.
Mr. Biden and Mr. Yoon are expected to work toward a diplomatic solution to what successive administrations call the “complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” But North, administration officials said, did not respond to several public and private messages from Mr. Biden and his aides.
And what seems irreversible now is North Korea’s well-established and advanced program.
With China expanding its arsenal to 1,500 weapons by around 2035, according to Pentagon estimates, and Russia threatening to use tactical weapons in Ukraine, “this is not an easy external environment to talk to North Korea,” Victor Cha said. , a professor at Georgetown University who directed policy toward the North during the George W. Bush administration. “He looked at his surroundings and said, ‘I don’t think so.'”
Mr Trump vowed “fire and fury like the world has never seen” as North Korea greeted the presidency with a missile launch; he finally tried the innovative approach of direct diplomacy with Mr. Kim. He appeared at one point predicting that Mr. Kim would begin disarming within six months and declaring at another that the North “is no longer a nuclear threat.” Arsenal just keep growing.
On Friday, North Korea’s foreign minister, Choe Son-hui, repeated a line his government has been touting in recent months, saying the North’s status “as a world-class nuclear power is final and irreversible.”
Some experts believe that the change in rhetoric or the threat of a first strike indicates a greater willingness by the North to use nuclear weapons. The response will be devastating. But gone are the days when American officials thought the arsenal was a bargaining chip, to be exchanged for trade deals, or for the hotels Mr. Trump said America would help build on North Korea’s coast.
There is a misguided belief, said Joseph S. Nye, who oversaw one of North Korea’s first intelligence assessments for the U.S. government, “that they will try to cash in on the chips and get nothing” for nuclear weapons. But instead of developing the country, he said at the Harvard conference, the North’s highest goal was “to preserve the dynasty,” and that meant holding onto the arsenal, and expanding it.
North Korea’s newfound confidence in expanding its arsenal, American officials said in interviews, is partly explained by its changing relationship with China. Previously, the United States cooperated with Beijing – a critical supplier of energy and trade to the North – to control the country. In the mid-2000s, the Chinese even hosted the so-called six-party talks – North Korea, along with Japan, Russia, the United States and South Korea – to resolve the nuclear issue. When Pyongyang conducts nuclear tests, Beijing often chooses sanctions, and imposes some.
Now, instead of seeing North Korea as a rude and angry neighbor, China has welcomed it, along with Russia and Iran, as part of what White House officials call a coalition of the suffering. While Chinese officials may fear that North Korea’s nuclear tests could go wrong, creating a radioactive cloud, they seem happy that the North is bothering the United States and its allies with regular missile tests.
Pyongyang’s latest tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles – including those fueled by solid fuel, which makes it quick to come out of hiding and launch – show that North Korea is now almost able to reach American territory, although its ability to reach certain targets is not precise. . And in the past year, the North has established its nuclear capabilities in law and has begun to talk about first-strike capabilities, rather than making its arsenal its true defense.
On March 27, North Korea also released a photo of Mr. Kim inspecting the Hwasan-31, a small standard nuclear warhead kit that can be mounted on a variety of nuclear-capable missiles and drones.
If the module is real, the photos show the North is demonstrating its ability to produce a standard nuclear warhead, said Hong Min, a North Korea weapons expert at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. Mr Kim also called for mass-produced nuclear warheads to “exponentially” increase the country’s nuclear arsenal. Last month, he ordered his government to ramp up production of weapons-grade nuclear material.
South Korean officials say some of the North’s claims, such as underwater drone capabilities and supersonic missiles, are exaggerated. The reaction in Washington and Seoul has vowed to strengthen the alliance – made easier by the fact that Mr. Yoon took a far more hawkish view of the way to deal with the North than his predecessor, Moon Jae-in, who visited Mr. . Biden in May 2021.
So the two leaders are expected to talk at length, publicly, about “extended deterrence,” with Mr. Biden offering more regular and visible nuclear-armed submarine and aircraft visits to South Korea, bolstering recently restored and expanded joint military exercises. . (The exercises have been variously delayed and scaled back under Mr. Trump.)
Kim Tae-hyo, deputy national security adviser to Mr. Yoon, said that the top agenda item at the summit is how to increase South Korea’s confidence in Washington’s commitment to protect its allies with its nuclear umbrella. But Korean officials say it depends more on confidence in the sitting American president — and whether, amid North Korea’s attacks on the South using tactical nuclear weapons, Washington will be willing to take the risk of entering a nuclear war.
Mr. Biden’s words at a press conference on Wednesday will be chosen for what he may, or may not, say about his determination to take the risk of nuclear involvement.
A new cyberinitiative will also be announced: the North finances its nuclear program with the theft of cryptocurrency and attacks on central bank reserves, and the South, although it rarely discusses it, has developed a cybercorps attacking skilled loose based on the US Cyber Command.
Outsiders will also be looking for signs of temporary or permanent damage from the leaks of Pentagon and CIA documents in recent weeks that have had the United States listening to South Korean national security officials as they debate whether to send artillery shells to Ukraine. The revelation was very embarrassing for Mr. Yoon, as it showed a lack of trust from his greatest friend.
But officials said they believe Mr. Yoon will move past it, celebrating cultural ties with the United States and booming investment by South Korean companies in semiconductor plants.
There’s one thing South Korean officials say they won’t ask for: the return of America’s tactical nuclear weapons to their country. They were withdrawn in 1991.
Mr. Yoon’s assistant said he didn’t want to go back.
David E. Sanger reported from Seoul and Washington. Choe Sang-Hun reported from Seoul.
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