to this theme again in 2015: “How long will we go on defending South Korea from North Korea without payment?” And as president in 2017, he harped on this issue, insisting that Washington was subsidizing South Korea and that “it doesn’t make any sense” to continue to have troops—now around 28,500—there.
Trump’s calls for a ban on Muslims from entering the United States and for a wall to prevent “illegals” from crossing the border were demonstrative of his version of an idealized America and reminiscent of the ethnically pure Korea that the Kim family promoted and on which it depended to marshal a vicious nationalism to rally the people around Kim Jong Un. “Fear,” candidate Trump told Bob Woodward in March 2016, was where “real power” lay, and one need not look too closely at North Korea to recognize that fear of the outside and fear of the autocrat’s power is where Kim stakes his claim.
Both men had something to prove. And both were thin-skinned. Trump the businessman, the candidate, and the president was obsessed with the perception that the world had long been laughing at the United States. Kim, too, was hypersensitive to any real and perceived criticism. He purged senior officials who did not clap hard enough, assassinated a half-brother who publicly questioned his ability to lead, and attacked through cyber means a movie studio that dared to produce a movie about a CIA plot to kill him. Amid sneers, doubt, and condescending comments about their inexperience, unpredictability, and brashness, Trump and Kim defied the critics and upended political and international norms. Their sense of competitiveness and confidence, born of their belief in their own headlines and their perceived victories, fueled their conviction that they can handle any challenge, including a potential nuclear confrontation in 2017. Hadn’t Trump won the presidency, the ultimate prize, despite what all the haters said? Hadn’t Kim become the youngest dictator with nuclear weapons and literally gotten away with murder, even amid predictions about regime collapse after his father died?
As Trump and Kim dug in their heels, used hyperbole to make their points, and challenged each other’s manhood, the world braced for the possibility that these two unpredictable and aggressive leaders could bluster their way into a nuclear conflagration in their determination to prove their dominance.
When Donald Trump came into the White House, the outgoing president, Barack Obama, warned him that North Korea would be his biggest headache, and Kim quickly showed what a pain he could be, launching medium-range (620–1,860 miles), intermediate-range (1,860–3,400 miles), and intercontinental (over 3,400 miles) ballistic missiles, all in Trump’s first year. After a two-month policy review—a typical process for new administrations—the Trump team announced a policy of “maximum pressure and engagement.” Although Trump declared that “the era of [Obama’s] strategic patience with the North Korea regime” was over, the strategy actually represented continuity with the previous administration’s approach of increasing diplomatic, economic, and military pressure on Pyongyang to punish it and try to force the Kim regime to make a decision to come to the negotiating table in order to relieve that pressure by taking credible measures to dismantle its nuclear weapons program.
In 2016, the Obama administration took actions to further tighten the screws on North Korea, laying the foundation for the Trump administration’s maximum pressure policy. Obama’s new measures had teeth—they constrained Kim’s choices by shutting down his regime’s efforts to generate funds through its exports of coal, seafood, and labor, expected to cost North Korea $1 billion annually, a not insignificant sum given the country’s already stressed economy and the fact that the regime earns only $3 billion per year from export revenues. Maximum pressure also included targeting non–North Koreans who facilitate sanctions evasion and revenue generation, getting countries to limit or cut off trade and diplomatic ties to North Korea, and especially getting China—the country’s biggest trading partner by far—to implement sanctions.
Things got personal as Pyongyang successfully tested its first intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-14, which achieved an altitude of approximately 1,700 miles before going down about 600 miles away, into the Sea of Japan. The regime tested it at a high angle to avoid overflying Japan, an act that would have been highly provocative, but if the missile had been launched at a typical trajectory, it could have traveled for 4,000 miles. Kim decided to test it on July 4, 2017, Independence Day, in a clear message that he was marking a milestone that brought North Korea closer to the ability