Former envoy Joseph R. DeTrani: Danger of nuclear conflict with North Korea better than ever

The danger that North Korea will set off a nuclear war in Northeast Asia poses the most serious threat to peace in the region since the end of the Korean War, according to a former American diplomat and retired CIA officer who may know Pyongyang better than any other U.S. official alive.

Joseph R. DeTrani, who spent more than three decades engaged in North Korean affairs and working with its officials of its isolated communist regime, also warns in a new book that North Korea has threatened to share nuclear weapons and material with rogue states or terrorist groups.

“The likelihood of intentional or accidental conflict on the Korean Peninsula, with a nuclear-armed North Korea that views South Korea and the United States as enemies, is greater now than at any time since the 1953 armistice that ended combat during the Korean War,” Mr. DeTrani, who was involved in negotiations with the rogue regime in North Korea since 2003, said.

Mr. DeTrani reveals many details of both his intelligence and diplomatic work in his recently published “The North Korean Threat: Intelligence and Diplomacy — A Personal Memoir.” It was produced by the National Institute for Public Policy.

After the U.S. and regional states spent more than two decades in talks seeking to convince North Korea to give up its nuclear program, a clandestine highly enriched uranium program that was discovered by U.S. intelligence in 2000 eventually scuttled all denuclearization efforts.

Mr. DeTrani believes the danger posed by North Korea under current leader Kim Jong-un — the third generation of the Kim family to exercise iron control over the country — is real and growing. 

“Currently, North Korea is an existential threat to South Korea, Japan, Northeast Asia and the United States,” he said. “We ignore North Korea at our own peril.”

China, which has some influence over North Korea because of its trade and economic clout, has declined to rein in Mr. Kim’s regime because of Beijing’s own tense relationship with the United States.

Meanwhile, in the face of inconsistent policies by the U.S. and its allies as Pyongyang’s military budget grew, North Korea “exponentially increased its nuclear weapons capabilities and persisted with its illicit activities,” Mr. DeTrani said.

The expanding North Korean nuclear program is also undermining U.S. efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear arms. South Korea’s government has begun to question U.S. nuclear arms protection and polls show ordinary South Koreans favoring the development of their own nuclear weapons program.

Unpredictable threat

North Korea is convinced its nuclear and conventional weapons are needed for survival and the regime has shown unpredictable and threatening behavior to protect its capability.

“Using tactical nuclear weapons, as North Korea said it is capable of doing, casualties and devastation would be horrific” if an attack on Seoul were carried out, Mr. DeTrani said.

U.S. adversaries such as China and Russia have emerged as enablers of the Kim regime, allowing the North to escape the worst consequences of international sanctions over its weapons programs and human rights record.

“North Korea has a history of aggression and human rights abuses, with a leadership in Pyongyang literally divorced from the outside world, with the exception of a long-term relationship with China and Russia,” he said.

Since a failed summit between Mr. Kim and President Donald Trump in Hanoi in 2019, North Korea is in “a race to build more nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, to Include hypersonic and submarine-launched missiles, some theoretically capable of defeating missile defense systems,” Mr. DeTrani stated.

Mr. DeTrani’s first exposure to North Korea took place during a CIA posting to Tehran in 1976 when two North Korean diplomats nearly ran over him and his wife in the parking lot of the Tehran Hilton Hotel.

“I will never forget the look of anger on the face of the North Korean driver, who obviously knew we were Americans,” he said. “That event stayed with me during 13 years of negotiations with North Korea, and during secret visits to Pyongyang, with no communications to the outside world.”

In 2003, Mr. DeTrani was appointed the State Department’s special envoy for North Korea and worked on the so-called six-party talks on nuclear issues. The talks, which at the time included both China and Russia, followed North Korea’s withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty that year.

Mr. DeTrani recalls that negotiating with Pyongyang was difficult for the U.S. side due to sharp differences between the White House national security officials in the George W. Bush administration and State Department officials open to making concessions in order to reach a deal. A joint agreement was reached in September 2005 calling for North Korea to end its pursuit of nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees and promises of normal relations.

But just a year later, North Korea under Mr. Kim’s father Kim Jong-il began launching ballistic missiles and conducted an underground nuclear test, throwing relations into a tailspin.

By 2009, the secret North Korean uranium enrichment program would lead to the unraveling of the six-party talks and also to Mr. Trump’s summit meeting in Hanoi ten years later with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Mr. Trump insisted during that meeting that North Korea had to include the secret uranium program in any denuclearization  deal to lift United Nations sanctions on Pyongyang. Mr. Kim refused, and Mr. Trump abruptly ended the summit.

Secret diplomacy

After a stint as the North Korean intelligence mission manager at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Mr. DeTrani became director of the National Counterproliferation Center and in 2011 traveled to North Korea on a secret visit to attempt to restart nuclear talks.

But several of the North Korean officials who held talks with Mr. DeTrani at the time ended up purged by Mr. Kim and executed, including Jang Song-thaek, at one time the second highest figure in the North Korean hierarchy after Mr. Kim.

On the nuclear proliferation threat, Mr. DeTrani recalled in one meeting with North Korean official Yu Gun in 2004. Mr. Yu told him the United States must accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state.

“If you don’t, we will build more nuclear weapons, test them and sell some of them to other countries,” Mr. Yu was quoted as saying.
The official was told that if any nuclear weapon from North Korea were used against the United States that it could be traced forensically to Pyongyang. The United States would also “respond quickly with overwhelming military force,” Mr. DeTrani wrote.

Pyongyang isn’t just a threat to its immediate neighborhood, Mr. DeTrani noted: North Korea also was closely involved in the Syrian nuclear reactor that was bombed by Israeli jets in 2007 and more recently has strengthened ties with Russia that U.S. officials say include sending munitioins and other military supplies to Russia’s invasion force fighting in Ukraine.

Since the failed summit in Hanoi in 2019, North Korea has refused to return to talks with the United States.

Worse, North Korea in the early 2020s, began launching new long-range missiles, including the Hwasong-18 and Hwasong-17 intercontinental range missiles. The launches signaled that North Korea can now strike most of U.S. territory with a nuclear warhead.

Additionally, North Korea announced in 2022 that it could use its nuclear missiles in preemptive attacks.

Strong and weak

Mr. DeTrani noted that North Korea’s rise as a military threat has come despite the failure of the Kim regime to deliver economic growth or better living conditions for its own population.

“North Korea is a dangerous nuclear weapons state with significant economic issues: food scarcity, dearth of medicines and therapeutics, and a backward health care system,” Mr. DeTrani said. “The nuclear and economic situation in North Korea requires immediate international attention.”

Critics have faulted the Biden administration for failing to deal with North Korea, a failure highlighted by growing ties between Mr. Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent months.

The North Korea alignment with Russia is growing even as the regime remains closely tied economically to China. Completing the circle of relations with states hostile to Washington and its allies, Pyongyang has also sold missiles and other military goods to Iran. Mr. DeTrani said U.S. diplomacy deserves some of the blame for the recent turn of events.

“I think we dropped the ball with North Korea, giving Russia — and possibly China — a win,” Mr. DeTrani said in an email, noting Pyongyang’s alliance with Russia’s Mr. Putin will continue as long as the war in Ukraine continues.

“For North Korea, an emboldened Kim Jong-un is again getting global attention and technical assistance with their nuclear, missile and conventional weapons programs.”

Mr. DeTrani also highlights North Korea’s role in international criminal activities, including currency counterfeiting and illicit drug trafficking.

The brutal abuse of human rights in North Korea is also discussed extensively in the book, including a pattern of unlawful or arbitrary killings; forced disappearances; torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and punishment by government authorities; arbitrary arrests and detentions of political prisoners and detainees and transnational repression against people outside the country.

“The list of these heinous abuses goes on and on,” Mr. DeTrani stated.

The former envoy said even though North Korea will not give up its nuclear arms, a return to talks on denuclearization are possible and could take years or even decades to bear fruit.