North Korea Isn’t Giving Up Its Nuclear Arsenal

New York Times: “The staying power of Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal highlights an uncomfortable truth for Mr. Biden as he prepares to greet President Moon Jae-in of South Korea at the White House on Friday. Mr. Moon has said denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is a ‘matter of survival’ for his country, and he has called on Mr. Biden to revive negotiations.”

“But North Korea’s arsenal of nuclear weapons and its stockpile of fuel have roughly doubled in the past four years, a steady rise that proceeded even as President Donald J. Trump held high-drama meetings with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader. The best unclassified estimates are that the North has at least 45 nuclear weapons, and appears headed to an arsenal roughly the size of Pakistan’s, another nuclear state the United States once demanded must disarm, and now has all but given up that it ever will. For the North, that has always been a model to follow.”