Trump faces a far more emboldened Kim Jong Un this time around

President-elect Donald Trump will find North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, a much tougher and more emboldened character to deal with when he enters office.

Donald Trump has long reminisced about the unlikely bromance he formed with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un while president.

On the campaign trail, he claimed the North Korean leader missed him and said that relations would improve once he returned to power.

Kim hasn’t been so enthusiastic. At a defense expo in Pyongyang this week, he accused the US of an “unchanging aggressive and hostile policy” toward North Korea that has placed the world in the “most chaotic and violent” state since World War II.

His comments suggest that Trump will find Kim a much tougher and more emboldened character to deal with this time around.

The stakes couldn’t be higher, with North Korea providing Russia with vital support for its war in Ukraine, and menacing its neighbors with rhetoric and weapons tests.

“Trump comes into his second term with a weaker hand than he had in 2017,” Jeremy Chan, a senior analyst with the Eurasia Group, focused on China and northeastern Asia, told B-17.

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un at the 2019 Hanoi summit.

A relationship gone sour

Trump is seeking to gear up his relationship with Kim again, with Reuters reporting Wednesday that he will likely seek new direct talks when he takes office.

However, Kim has long harbored a grudge against the President-elect, according to Bruce Bennet, an analyst with the RAND Corporation.

The grudge goes back to the 2019 Hanoi conference with Trump, where the pair engaged in one of the first face-to-face meetings between a North Korean leader and US president in history. There, Kim overplayed his hand, and Trump walked out.

“Kim was furious and many of his people who had helped arrange the meeting paid severe prices,” said Bennet.

“I think it is unlikely that Kim Jong-un will meet with Trump, even if Trump pursues that possibility unless Trump is prepared to offer some serious concessions before the meeting.”

North Korea tested its new solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile, Hwasong-19, this week.

Kim breaks North Korea’s isolation

As Trump returns to power, the world is a more complex and dangerous place, and Kim has profited.

Back in 2017, when Trump took office, North Korea faced almost total international isolation as the UN imposed sweeping sanctions to pressure the state to dismantle its nuclear program.

Sanctions were a powerful tool as Trump sought to place further “maximum pressure” on Kim.

That’s no longer the case. Kim has leveraged the Russian invasion of Ukraine to break North Korea’s isolation, brokering a deal with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

In exchange for thousands of North Korean troops and millions of artillery rounds for his Ukraine invasion, Putin has provided North Korea with food, oil, and technology.

Meanwhile, Russia has used its permanent place on the UN Security Council to stymie the sanctions enforcement program.

Since Russia’s 2022 Ukraine invasion, Kim has also been taking bigger risks, said Chan, aggressively confronting longtime foe South Korea and menacing the US and its allies with long-range missile tests.

Trump has pledged to end the Ukraine war, possibly by handing Ukrainian territory to Russia.

Critics say a lenient position on Russian aggression further emboldens North Korea.

“It will be interesting to see how the new administration reconciles a more lenient position on Russian aggression —now enabled by North Korean troops and material — with continued efforts toward the rollback of the North Korean nuclear program,” said Daniel Salisbury, a visiting research fellow at the Centre for Science & Security Studies at King’s College London.

North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin at a military parade in Pyongyang in June. 

Trump’s gambit

The President-elect does have some advantages in dealing with North Korea’s leader — not least his oft boasted of “chemistry.”

“Trump is more likely to use carrots than sticks to achieve his strategic goals on the Korean Peninsula. This means resuming direct leader-to-leader diplomacy with Kim, with whom he has always enjoyed a strong rapport,” said Chan.

Trump’s pledge to end the Ukraine war could work to his advantage, reducing Russian dependence on North Korea and leading the state to find itself once again isolated.

A deal between Trump and Kim appears to be a long shot, but it’s just about possible, said Chan.

Trump could stop short of demanding the denuclearization of North and instead broker a “freeze” on nuclear development and weapons tests.

In return, Trump could offer Kim sanctions relief and a reduction of US troops in South Korea.

“Kim likely sees in Trump a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to remake his country’s relationship with the US, and thereby the wider world,” said Chan.

“The potential to achieve his strategic goal of winning recognition as a nuclear state while coming in from the international cold will likely be too great for Kim to pass up, particularly as the Ukraine war winds down.”

The nuclear option

Others remain skeptical of Kim’s willingness to do business with Trump after the 2019 humiliation.

Trump may have to abandon the flattery and return to the threats and pressure.

For Bennet, the realistic options available to Trump could come down to military pressure and information warfare.

One option is to modernize the nuclear weapons facilities in South Korea the US abandoned in 1991. Another is to launch an information warfare campaign inside North Korea.

Ultimately, events in Ukraine will determine whether Kim wants a new rapprochement.

Neither maximum pressure nor flattery “may not work until the Ukraine war comes to an end,” Ellen Kim, a senior fellow with the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told B-17.

“We have to see how North Korea’s relationship with Russia evolves.”