U.S. expert says Trump’s N.K. nuclear power mention ‘realistic’ view of threat

January 22, 2025

A prominent U.S. expert said Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s recent reference to North Korea as a “nuclear power” appears to be a “realistic” view of North Korean threats following a look at how the security challenge has evolved over the last four years.

Sydney Seiler, former officer at the U.S. National Intelligence Council, made the remarks after Trump on Monday called Pyongyang a nuclear power — a term that U.S. officials have mostly refrained from openly using as it could be construed as Washington’s recognition of the North’s nuclear program.

“I think it tells us that President Trump and his national security team have looked at the North Korean threat, what has evolved over the last four years … and faced the reality that North Korea continues to grow its arsenal qualitatively and quantitatively … the threat we face today is greater than the threat was four years ago,” he said during a podcast hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“So it’s a degree of just simply a realistic view of the threat,” he added.

He raised questions over whether Trump’s reference to the North means a lot or gives much insight into how his administration will deal with North Korea.

The term, “nuclear power,” is different from the nuclear-weapon states — the U.S., China, France, Britain and Russia — that are officially recognized as possessing nuclear weapons by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, better known as the NPT.

Still, Trump’s use of the term raised concerns in South Korea, a U.S. ally that seeks close policy coordination with Washington to achieve the long-term goal of the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula at a time when Pyongyang has been doubling down on its nuclear and missile programs.

During a Senate confirmation hearing last week, Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth also called the North a nuclear power.

Touching on the possibility of Trump resuming dialogue with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Seiler said that “the road forward is in large part in Kim’s hands.”

“(Kim) has refused to talk to the U.S. since 2019 … his failure to lock in his nuclear status at Hanoi, a subsequent meeting with the president in Panmunjom later that year and of course, the working-level meeting at Stockholm, which was a last contact,” he said.

“Since then, Kim Jong-un has been adamant in refusing to talk to the U.S. So, it’s hard to predict at this time how that might change.”

During his first term, Trump had three meetings — the first-ever summit in Singapore in June 2018, the Hanoi summit in February 2019 and the meeting in the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom in June 2019. The U.S. and the North last held working-level nuclear talks in Stockholm in October 2019.

Some observers have said that Pyongyang’s appetite for reengagement with Washington might have dwindled as it now relies on Russia for food, fuel, security assurances and other forms of support after its provision of munitions and troops to back Moscow’s war in Ukraine.