It was Trump who gained the most from the 2019 Hanoi summit, as he could divert public and media attention toward Vietnam’s capital and away from Washington, where the congressional testimony of Michael Cohen, his former personal attorney, was underway. He is now apparently using North Korea as a distraction again, this time from his disastrous failure in Iran.

For Kim, on the other hand, Hanoi was a nightmarish experience that could have threatened his monolithic control of the country. At the time, Kim was confident that he could reach a deal with Trump, allowing US inspections of North Korea’s known nuclear sites in return for a relaxation of economic sanctions. This would be a preliminary step toward a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War and normalize diplomatic ties.

Before hopping on his luxurious train that would take more than sixty hours to reach Hanoi, Kim hosted a huge departure ceremony. Some high-ranking officials wept with joy in anticipation of the concessions they expected to gain from Washington and Seoul after seven decades of bone-crushing sanctions and forced isolation.

Instead, the summit ended without an agreement, as Trump abruptly demanded access to additional sites for inspection. Kim had to ride the same luxurious, slow train back to Pyongyang, empty-handed and deeply humiliated. Later that year, Trump and Kim had an impromptu meeting at the joint security area of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) dividing North and South Korea, in a move widely seen as a face-saving gesture for Kim and another headline-grabbing public stunt for Trump.

Following the Hanoi fiasco, in which it had unusually high political and economic stakes, the Kim regime appeared to show signs of distress. Kim and his sister responded strongly, ordering the explosive demolition of a liaison building built by South Korea at the joint security area and blaming the Hanoi failure on Seoul’s role as a supposedly clumsy and deceptive middleman.

Kim also enacted a law that authorized the death penalty for watching or distributing South Korean movies and music, which had become a clandestine national pastime for his people. North Korea further accelerated the development and production of nuclear warheads without feeling the need to conduct another test, which underscored the maturity of its nuclear technology. It now has fifty-seven “very powerful” warheads, according to Trump, although South Korea puts the figure at 120.

Kim also sought to appease the populace, which culminated in his public apology in 2020 for failing to do enough to improve their difficult livelihoods. He severed all dialogue and shredded existing agreements with Seoul, renouncing reunification as a national goal. Nevertheless, during Trump’s first term, Kim never stopped exchanging letters with the US president, urging him to engage in direct dialogue without South Korean meddling.

Kim’s entrenchment finally began to pay off in October 2024 when he dispatched an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 special operations troops to fight against Ukraine for Russia. North Korea had already been selling artillery shells and missiles to Russia, which in return helped its ally to circumvent sanctions and provided it with hard currency, military technology, and flour. The benefits were starkly visible even on North Korean state television, which began broadcasting a series of “flour food” exhibitions in a country where rice is the staple food.

As Kim sought to lean toward Russia, China has felt obliged to mend its relations with North Korea, which had previously deteriorated after Beijing began complying with the international sanctions regime. China steadily increased trade with North Korea to keep Pyongyang at arm’s length from Moscow. This trade rose 22 percent year over year during the first two months of 2026, after recovering to its pre-pandemic level in 2025.

North Korea’s economic and political rebound coincides with the decline of the US-dominated unipolar order. To Pyongyang, this decline means the restoration of an old bipolar order, under which North Korea stands to benefit from the military rivalry between the United States and its allies on the one hand and China and Russia on the other. Just as was the case during the Cold War era, Pyongyang can play the competing powers off against each other as they vie for influence over a strategically located and politically important region.

It should thus come as little surprise that Pyongyang is now enjoying a niche economic boom, strong enough to draw attention from such business media outlets as The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and Bloomberg. The upturn appears to be real, making Gucci bags and Ikea furniture affordable to Pyongyang’s elite and keeping the lights on at ports and heavy industry plants along the east coast.

However, the rising North Korean tide still appears to be too low to lift all ships, at least for now. Most of all, the cost is being paid in the blood of working-class children shed on foreign soil. About 2,300 North Korean soldiers were killed during their first deployments alongside Russian forces, according to the BBC. In August 2025, Kim cried publicly again at the opening ceremony of a memorial for those killed in combat.

If the Trump–Kim summit does go ahead, it will unfold against a highly complex global backdrop. Iran and the United Stats are still at war. Iran supplies drones to Russia; North Korea supplies combat personnel, artillery shells, and missiles to Russia; South Korea provides ammunition and artillery shells to Ukraine through Poland and the US; China supplies drone components to Iran and Russia, and food and other resources to North Korea; Russia supplies military technology, food, and financial support to North Korea; and Ukrainian drones recently sank an Iranian freight ship in the Caspian Sea.

Many South Koreans are concerned that a new Trump–Kim summit could heighten tensions on the peninsula rather than ease them as Trump’s overtures proceed while sidelining the South. The concerns are turning into anxiety, as starkly reflected in a recent Gallup Korea poll conducted after the truncated military drill. About two-thirds of respondents said that South Korea should have its own nuclear weapons, while only 30 percent were opposed to such a move.

South Korea is playing catch-up in response to Trump’s overtures and the replies from Kim, with all communication between Seoul and Pyongyang severed and a small White House coterie pursuing behind-the-scenes diplomacy. Although South Korea’s liberal president, Lee Jae-myong, welcomed Trump’s unilateral move, he also said he would accelerate efforts to regain wartime operational control of the South Korean military from the US — a form of control that Washington arrogated to itself during the Korean War back in 1950. It has been promising to relinquish this authority since 1989 but has yet to do so.

After North Korea amended its constitution in May 2026 to define the two Koreas as two hostile states rather than parts of a divided nation, much of South Korea’s nationalist left found itself in disarray. Supporters of this political tendency had long regarded North Korea as the more independent and self-reliant of the two, viewing the South as a prosperous US lackey destined to follow the North’s lead in the process of reunification.

Any US deal with North Korea that does not involve South Korea will likely prompt Seoul to go nuclear on its own or seek some form of nuclear deterrence. Jeong Se-hyun is a former reunification minister and an architect of the engagement policy with the North under the liberal government of Nobel Peace Laureate Kim Dae-jung. In a recent radio interview, he said that South Korea should demand that the United States redeploy to the South tactical nuclear warheads that it withdrew in 1991 if Washington recognizes the North as a nuclear power. The world’s tenth-largest arms exporter is also now in the final stage of launching a nuclear-powered submarine.

A deal that ultimately excludes the South is unlikely, given that Trump will probably expect Seoul (in combination with Japan) to foot the bill for any agreement with Pyongyang. However, tensions and mistrust will continue to linger.

After all, we are seeing an attempt at a historic initiative by an octogenarian, autocratic figure with a severely limited attention span, who is dealing with a young and shrewd dictator willing to retain the power he inherited from his grandfather through his father, at the expense of the lives of his own young soldiers.

Nevertheless, in a world increasingly engulfed by wars and conflicts on a global scale, even a summit like this would be better than no rapprochement at all between the state with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal and a de facto nuclear power. No one should mistake it for peace, even if Kim cries in public again. The Left should be watching this space closely and cautiously for potential openings to build a strong antinuclear peace campaign from below.