Ian: Last year the headlines were all about the chance of war, now all of a sudden the headlines are about denuclearization and peace. Has Kim Jong-un really had a change of heart?

Sokeel: I don’t know a single analyst who thinks Kim Jong-un is going to denuclearize.

There are some obvious and not-so-obvious reasons for wanting to build nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. More obviously, nukes are the most powerful weapon invented by humankind. If you have them you don’t get attacked. If you don’t have them then you might get attacked — as we’ve seen with Libya and Iraq. North Korea is one of the most militarized and paranoid states in the world, is already a ‘rogue state’, and is in a confrontation with the strongest military on the planet, so I guess the question is why wouldn’t they try to secure the most powerful weapon available.

The less obvious reasons are on KJU’s domestic front. When Kim Jong-il died in late 2011, KJU was a young and unproven successor barely known among North Korean ‘elites’ and ordinary citizens. Unable to rely solely on purges and coercion, he had to prove himself and build domestic legitimacy. He signalled early on that his priorities would be national defense and economic improvement. The nuclear and missile programs were already in progress and were probably easier to accelerate and bring to “successful completion”, marking a significant policy success and ‘proving’ his competency and strength as leader to both elites and ordinary citizens — at least to some degree.

There just isn’t an incentive big enough that can overturn KJU’s logic for retaining nukes, especially if you consider that even if they decided to deal them away it would seem pretty much impossible to convince the US that they weren’t cheating. Sorry to bring up Iraq again, but they will recall that in 2003 UN weapons inspections were cut short because the US and UK decided to invade anyway.

2. Human rights are not up for discussion.