The following is the Dec. 6, 2024, Congressional Research Service, In Focus report U.S.-North Korea Relations.
From the report
Since 2016, North Korea’s advances in nuclear weapons and missile capabilities under leader Kim Jong-un have catapulted Pyongyang from a threat to U.S. interests in East Asia to a potential direct threat to the U.S. homeland. U.S. policy on North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK) has focused primarily on the DPRK’s nuclear weapons and missile programs. Other U.S. concerns include, the DPRK’s illicit revenue generating activities (including cybercrime); expanded DPRK-Russia ties that may provide North Korea with more advanced military capabilities; North Korea’s systemic human rights abuses; the potential for North Korea to resume conventional military attacks against U.S. treaty ally South Korea (Republic of Korea, or ROK); and the risk that a DPRK-ROK clash escalates into a major military conflict.
Since negotiations between then-President Donald Trump and Kim to freeze and dismantle the North’s nuclear weapons program broke down in 2019, North Korea largely has ignored U.S. and South Korean attempts to resume dialogue. Since 2022, North Korea has test launched more than 80 ballistic missiles, including multiple tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of delivering nuclear warheads. The tests appear to have advanced the reliability and precision of DPRK missile forces and improved North Korea’s ability to defeat regional missile defense systems. In 2022, Kim declared North Korea will never denuclearize. In late 2023 and early 2024, Kim abandoned decades of official policy and declared that South Korea is not inhabited by “fellow countrymen” but is a separate, “hostile” state that North Korea would “subjugate” if war broke out.
As North Korea demonstrates greater military capability, some Members of Congress have pushed the Biden Administration to increase pressure, while others have called for offering greater incentives for North Korea to return to negotiations. Congress has created tools to shape North Korea’s information environment, both through sanctions policy and international broadcasting. The Otto Warmbier Countering North Korean Censorship and Surveillance Act of 2022 (Title LV, Subtitle F, P.L. 117-263) required the President to develop a strategy to combat North Korea’s “repressive information environment” and authorized $10 million annually through FY2027 to increase U.S.-government-sponsored broadcasting and information dissemination into the country. Some Members have expressed support for reauthorizing the North Korean Human Rights Act of 2004 (H.R. 3012/S. 584), which established a Special Envoy on North Korean Human Rights Issues in the State Department and authorized assistance from FY2005 through FY2022 for human rights, democracy, freedom of information, and humanitarian support for North Korean refugees. In 2023, the Senate confirmed the Biden Administration’s appointee for Special Envoy on North Korean Human Rights Issues, a post that had been vacant for over six years. In February 2024, the Departments of the Treasury, State, and Commerce announced new coordinated policies to improve the licensing of humanitarian delivery of agricultural commodities and medical devices to North Korea by nongovernmental organizations, steps some Members of Congress had sought for years.
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