The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s nuclear programme has challenged the US and its allies in Northeast Asia since the early 1990s. The defensive strategy adopted by Kim Jong-Il (1994-2011), then his son Kim Jong-Un, was to use nuclear weapons only when attacked by the forces of ”enemy states”. However, the failure of the recent Trump-Kim summit talks in Hanoi in 2019 and the maintenance of economic sanctions has resulted in a change of strategy for the current DPRK leader. In accordance with a law adopted by the Supreme People’s Assembly in September 2022 on state policy towards nuclear forces, the DPRK has lowered the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. In consequence, the new law, which has been defined as a doctrine, has dramatically changed the approach to the perception of nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula and started a debate in the Republic of Korea about its own nuclear deterrence system. In this context, it is important to ask in what direction Kim Jong Un’s stance has evolved and whether denuclearisation of the DPRK is even possible?
