The past year saw a string of escalations on the Korean Peninsula as Pyongyang bared its nuclear and missile advances for the world to see. Then quite suddenly, the North’s hitherto posture of nuclear defiance was thrown into reverse at the Olympics. Now the outward signs of progress are piling up: the two Koreas are talking, a high-level summit on the border is planned for April, and South Korean officials have indicated that the North is willing to enter into talks on denuclearization.

These developments are clearly a step up from the brinkmanship of 2017. But they’re hardly a breakthrough given the history of U.S. diplomatic attempts to rein in North Korea’s nuclear program.

Impact

This has all happened before, and it might just happen again. The history of US-led denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula is littered with false starts and misplaced hopes in a negotiated settlement. That long and winding road has led right up to our grim present situation: the two Koreas are still technically at war, steps toward economic cooperation like the Kaesong Industrial Region have been shuttered, and the North’s missile and nuclear programs are more advanced than they’ve ever been, and are now on the precipice of being able to credibly threaten the continental United States with a nuclear strike. The list of abortive agreements along the road is long:

• The Non-Proliferation Treaty (the North signed but then withdrew in 2003)
• The Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula of 1992 (where both Koreas pledged not to test, manufacture, produce, possess, or store nuclear weapons).
• The Agreed Framework of 1994 (which froze the construction of two reactors and halted work at another, only to break down in 2003 after the Bush administration discovered illicit uranium enrichment activities, an episode that resulted in the North’s withdrawal from the NPT).
• The Six-Party Talks agreement of 2005 (which unfolded in several rounds of talks from 2003-2008, only to break down over verification disagreements and a DPRK missile test in 2009).
• The Leap Day Agreement of 2012 (the Obama administration’s failed attempt to make diplomatic inroads with the new Kim Jong-un regime that lasted mere months before being scuttled by a satellite launch and then a nuclear test).

Lessons learned from history? There’s an extensive historical basis for pessimism going into this upcoming round of talks – if structured talks even come about – but that’s not to say that history is doomed to repeat itself.