The Kim Jong Un regime has repeatedly insisted that it is a nuclear weapon state in recent weeks, defiantly asserting that it will never relinquish its arsenal and that would-be interlocutors must acknowledge this.

So, what does it actually mean to accept North Korea as a nuclear weapon state? What steps would be necessary, and why would countries cling so firmly to denuclearization despite the Kim regime’s repeated assertions that its nuclear program is non-negotiable?

There is of course no shortage of evidence that North Korea possesses weapons of mass destruction: Nuclear weapons are