Abstract:

North Korea, a diminutive state geographically located in the North East Asian (NEA) sub-region, has for decades been secretly developing its nuclear weapons and missiles programme which began during the Cold War era. Constituting a threat to regional/international peace and stability, the United States over the years has pursued a foreign policy aimed at getting Pyongyang to freeze or dismantle its nuclear and missile programmes. But isolated North Korea, in defiance to international sanctions and pressure, has conducted several nuclear weapon and ballistic missile tests, thus escalating tension on the Korean Peninsula in particular and the NEA sub-region at large. This paper critically examines North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles programme from 1956 to 2019 and how such a programme has been a thorny issue in U.S. foreign policy. For this study, the historical approach was adopted and the qualitative method of secondary data collection. This paper concluded that time is not on the side of America. If the U.S. eventually fails in the nearest future to diplomatically resolve the problematic nuclear and missile programmes of North Korea, it will be left with no other choice than to recognise North Korea as a de facto nuclear-armed state in a world where the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) ought to be enforced, especially by the U.S.