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[정세전망 2026-특집호-제2호] North Korea’s 2026 External Relations Outlook |
| 2025년 12월 11일 |
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이성윤세종연구소 수석연구위원 | sylee@sejong.org
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Advances in Arms Buildup
December 2025 marks the end of North Korea’s five-year arms development plan (from early-2021 throughout 2025) that Kim Jong Un announced during the Eighth Party Congress in January 2021. Kim’s ambitious defense development plan included substantial progress in the following five “crucial” strategic capabilities:
● Hypersonic missilesAs of early-November 2025, North Korea appears to have made substantial progress in most of the five goals, except for the completion of building nuclear-powered submarines. Just how far the hyper-militarized regime’s nuclear-propelled submarine technology has come remains unclear, although concerns over the possibility of Russia providing in the future or even already having provided North Korea with a nuclear reactor for nuclear submarines linger.1)
● Miniaturized and ultra-large nuclear warheads (Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles, aka MIRV)
● Solid-fueled land-based and underwater-based inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBM) and submarine-based ballistic missiles (SLBM)
● Nuclear-powered submarines and underwater-launched strategic nuclear weapons
● ICBMs with pinpoint accuracy within a 15,000 km range.
As of January 2022, North Korea started testing its hypersonic missiles. In most known cases, they appear to have been successful launches. Progress also appears to have been made in the production of fissile material for the special nuclear warheads, with the regime calling for an “exponential growth” of its nuclear arsenal.2) North Korea has also successfully tested solid-fueled ICBMs, such as the Hwasong-18, in April and July 2023.3)
A Watershed Year for North Korea
September 3, 2025, Tiananmen Square, Beijing. China’s military parade marking the 80th anniversary of victory in the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression made an impression on the world with an overwhelming scale that only China could deliver. While cutting-edge lethal weapons—from nuclear-tipped ICBMs to underwater nuclear drones and laser weapons—were on full display, the real protagonist of the day, in a sense, was not a weapon system but an individual. Under the blazing sun, where temperatures hovered around 35 degrees Celsius, sat a man right beside President Xi Jinping, constantly wiping sweat from his brow. That man was North Korea's Chairman of the State Affairs Commission, Kim Jong Un.
Just a few years ago, he had been snubbed by both China and Russia. How did Kim come to stand shoulder to shoulder with the leaders of the world's two-out-of-three superpowers? Kim Jong Un to Xi Jinping's left, Putin to his right. This peculiar trio configuration was a blatant display of the anti-American ‘nuclear triad’ alliance, a symbolic scene announcing that Kim Jong Un had attained a rarified international standing neither Kim Il Sung nor Kim Jong Il had ever enjoyed. He profusely sweated but not in vain. It was an essential part of a thoroughly calculated diplomatic investment.
Ironically, it was the Russia-Ukraine war that erupted in 2022 that dramatically changed Kim Jong Un's fate from a subordinate to an equal in relations with Russia. As the war dragged on, Putin faced logistical challenges. He desperately needed artillery shells and short-range missiles. At that very moment, North Korea came onto Putin's radar. Possessing a conventional weapons stockpile of world-class caliber, North Korea became a key partner Putin could no longer afford to neglect. The power dynamic changed in an instant.
Proactive Diplomacy
The next month delivered more glitzy celebrations starring Kim Jong Un in the company of foreign dignitaries, this time on Kim’s home turf. October 10 marked the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party of Korea. The regime marked it with pomp and ceremony. The two biggest public events in the week leading up to the anniversary were the feted mass games—the biggest show on earth, featuring some 100,000 performers—on the eve of Party Foundation Day and a nighttime military parade on October 10.
Each was attended by Chinese Premier Li Qiang, Deputy Chairman of Russia’s State Security Council Dmitry Medvedev (a longtime close aide to President Vladimir Putin), and General Secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party Tô Lâm. In particular, Premier Li’s visit to Pyongyang was the first by a sitting Chinese premier in 16 years, since Wen Jiabao’s in October 2009. And Tô Lâm’s North Korea visit was the first by the top Vietnamese leader in 18 years, since Nong Duc Manh’s in 2007.4) This year’s list of foreign heads of state also featured the top leader of Laos, President Thongloun Sisoulith. Such an array of foreign dignitaries visiting North Korea suggest a tacit recognition of Kim Jong Un’s elevated international status following his attendance of China’s Victory Day military parade in September. It perhaps also implies Kim’s broader diplomatic outreach in 2026. -
Even More Weapons Buildup
In mid-September, Kim Jong Un declared that at the Ninth Party Congress, expected to be held in early 2026, he will present a doctrine calling for the simultaneous development of nuclear and conventional forces.5) This renewed focus on conventional military power represents the realities of modern warfare as overserved on the Ukrainian battlefield. Russia, despite possessing the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, to date, now almost four full years since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, has failed to emerge victorious. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent. Yet, the actual use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield is too controversial even for an autocratic country like Russia. The Russo-Ukrainian War is a lesson in the primacy of the modernization of conventional forces like drones, tanks, jamming, cyber, and artillery warfare.
Kim Jong Un is expected to accelerate his nation’s strategic and conventional military power in 2026. On November 28 this year, Kim presided over a ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the founding of the country’s air force. At the celebratory event at Kalma Airport, Kim announced that the air force will be given “new strategic military assets” and a “new important assignment,” without specifying either.6) Kim emphasized the crucial role of his nation’s air force “in the exercise of the nuclear war deterrent” and asserted that the “Air Force should resolutely repulse and control all sorts of espionage acts and possible military provocations of the enemies to encroach upon [North Korea’s] sovereign airspace.”
Hence, in 2026 Kim Jong Un will make a concerted effort to strengthen his conventional military forces, especially the Air Force, which lags behind the airpower of the U.S.-Republic of Korea alliance. In March 2025 North Korea unveiled its airborne early warning and control aircraft system and, in May, carried out its first live-fire air-to-air drill involving military aircraft. Such trends will likely continue throughout 2026.
Continuing Spotlight on the “First Daughter”
Meanwhile, Kim Jong Un's daughter also accompanied him to the Kalma Airport event. This marked her first appearance in the North Korean media in about three months, since accompanying her father on his visit to China for the Victory Day celebrations in early September. She wore for the occasion a black leather long coat similar in design to her father's. She participated in all the proceedings. In contrast to her first public appearance in November 2022, when she had a completely childlike image, on this day, wearing sunglasses and observing the air show with an expressionless face, her overall posture and demeanor appeared much more mature and relaxed under the spotlight. North Korean media announced her presence and once again used the title “Respected daughter.7)
Kim Jong Un’s trip to Beijing with his daughter in early-September drew extra media attention on the father-daughter dynamic.8) The international press as well as North Korea watchers wondered if Kim would present his daughter to President Xi Jinping as his heir. Some wondered if she would sit next to her father in the viewing platform in Tiananmen Square (she did not). The central question, that is, “Is the little girl, approximately twelve-years-old, in line to succeed her father one day?” still remains unconfirmed.
But the answer appears clear. Even as early as March 2024, when she accompanied her father on an inspection tour of the Gangdong Greenhouse agricultural complex, the state media called both father and daughter “great persons of guidance,” which is an ultra-elevated honorific exclusive to North Korea’s supreme leader and his designated successor.9)
Throughout 2025 she continued to make several noteworthy public appearances while standing and walking right next to her father. On April 25, 2025, she attended the launching ceremony of the new 5,000 ton destroyer, the Choe Hyon, in Nampo.10) Although she had shaken hands with the Russian ambassador to North Korea in October 2024, on May 9 she made her “diplomatic debut” by accompanying her father to the Russian Embassy in Pyongyang to mark the 80th anniversary of the Soviet victory in the Second World War.11) In June she was seen alongside her father at the launch of the Kang Kon, one of North Korea’s new destroyers built by its Navy.12) Hence, Kim Jong Un’s daughter is expected to remain in the spotlight in 2026, making several public appearances with her father at high profile events marking major anniversaries, diplomatic events, domestic construction projects, and rollouts of the most advanced weapons systems.
At the Eighth Party Congress in January 2021, Kim Jong Un assumed the official title of General Secretary, aligning himself with his predecessors, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, who both hold the same posthumous title. Furthermore, a new position of “First Secretary” was announced, one that was distinct from the General Secretary and, presumably, the Number Two official to Kim Jong Un. While it’s unlikely that Kim Ju Ae, still just a teenager, will be appointed to this position anytime soon, it is nonetheless a possibility that cannot be ruled out. Why Because an early pronouncement of Kim Jong Un’s daughter as the heir apparent mostly works in the North Korean regime’s favor. Beyond the softer feminine image and the wholesome, loving father-and-daughter family dynamic, it sends a potent message to North Korea’s primary adversaries, the United States and South Korea: “We have all the time in the world, while you are bound by term limits of four to five years.13)
Strengthening Pyongyang’s Alliance with Russia and China
In tandem with accelerating his nation’s conventional forces and nuclear power, Kim Jong Un is expected to stay active on the diplomatic front. Again, 2025 was a banner year in North Korea’s summit diplomacy, capped by global recognition of Kim—at least on the diplomatic stage—as an equal to Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. Kim’s summit meeting later in the day with Putin and with Xi the next day further solidified his international and domestic stature as a peer among the world’s most powerful nuclear states, excluding the United States.
At the start of the Kim-Putin summit, Putin praised the bravery and heroism of North Korean soldiers who fought alongside Russian troops against Ukraine.14) Kim replied, “If there’s anything I can do for you and the people of Russia, if there is more that needs to be done, I will consider it as a fraternal duty, an obligation that we surely need to bear, and will be prepared to do everything possible to help,” thus showing his appreciation for his nation’s active military alliance with Russia.15)
The next day, during Kim’s summit meeting with Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader vowed to “strengthen strategic coordination in international and regional affairs” with North Korea, to which Kim Jong Un replied that he will “invariably support” China in “defending Chinese sovereignty and territory.16) Notably, in a break with precedents of prior joint statements issued by the two leaders, China, for the first time, dropped the “denuclearization of the Korean peninsula” formulation, thus implying tacit acceptance of North Korea’s nuclear status. -
A Turn for the Worse in 2020
The failure of the 2019 Hanoi U.S.-North Korea Summit bore profound implications for South Korea’s relations with the North. High-level dialogue came to an end virtually overnight. As of that April, Kim Jong Un started to make disparaging remarks about South Korean President Moon Jae-In. Inter-Korean cooperation and planned joint projects hit a wall. No matter how hard the Moon administration tried to reach out to Pyongyang, the Kim regime refused to budge. The Coronavirus pandemic played a role in North Korea’s return to relative self-isolation and a hardened stance against South Korea, but the overall tenor of official North Korean statements on the South turned sour and personal. Kim Yo Jong led the way when it came to denouncing the South with her very first written statement on March 3, 2020.
With the impending inauguration of the Yoon Suk Yeol administration in May 2022, Kim Yo Jong started to threaten the South with of nuclear annihilation. In two formal statements in early-April, Ms. Kim, both in response to recent remarks by the outgoing South Korean Minister of Defense that South Korea, upon detecting an imminent launch of a North Korean nuclear-tipped missile against the South, will order a preemptive missile attack on the launch site, threatened to unleash her nation’s nuclear forces on the South’s military and leave it “little short of total destruction and ruin.”17) The rhetorical threats and acrimony reverberated throughout the Yoon administration’s truncated term in the wake of the ill-fated declaration of martial law on December 3, 2024, and President Yoon’s removal office by the nation’s Constitutional Court in April 2025. The Yoon presidency was punctuated by over a hundred missile blasts, including several ICBMs, with impunity.
Improving Relations with North Korea
Although the Lee Jae Myung administration has called on the North for dialogue and inter-Korean engagement, while making concessions like stopping loudspeaker propaganda broadcast into the North from the inter-Korean border village, the North continues to maintain its hardline stance against Seoul. In July, just over a month into the Lee presidency, the National Intelligence Service, the nation’s premier intelligence agency, stopped its 50 year-old new radio and TV broadcast into North Korea.18) Yet, still, the North has not budged at all. In fact, Kim Jong Un himself has repeatedly emphasized his “hostile two-states theory” vis-à-vis the South since late-2022. This past September, Kim Jong Un said, “If the U.S. discards its delusional obsession with denuclearization and truly seeks peaceful coexistence with us, there is no reason we cannot face each other. On the other hand, Kim reiterated that there is “no reason to sit across from” South Korea and that the North “will not engage [South Korea] at all.19)
At present it appears that North Korea will continue to shun the South. At the same time, once the next summit meeting between Pyongyang and Washington takes place, possibly as early as next spring, Kim Jong Un, too, will feel the incentive to be engaged once again by Seoul. The reason is quite clear. While the U.S. has the most political and military concessions to offer, including engaging the North in mutual arms control talks, de facto recognition of North Korea as a nuclear weapons-possessing state, and normalizing diplomatic relations with Pyongyang, South Korea maintains a unique position. No other nation on earth has the will and capacity to offer North Korea immense economic concessions on the magnitude of hundreds of billions of dollars over time as does the free and affluent Republic of Korea.
2026: Kim Jong-un's Final Puzzle, Is a ‘Big Deal’ with Trump Possible?
If Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump meet and exchange views, however briefly, during Trump's visit to China in April 2026—whether it’s in Beijing or Panmunjom—and create an atmosphere conducive to holding a summit later in the year to formally discuss bilateral issues, the embers of U.S.-North Korea dialogue could be reignited.
This would create an extra incentive for President Lee Jae Myung, and even Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae, to engage with Kim Jong Un if only not to fall behind Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin in this geopolitical game. For President Trump, October 2026—ahead of midterm elections the next month—is the prime window to aim for the Nobel Peace Prize. Keeping that timing in mind, he is likely to start unpacking North Korea-U.S. relations now and push for a summit meeting starting in the first half of 2026, with the goal of adopting a joint statement.
Should President Trump visit Pyongyang following his trip to Beijing next April, the repercussions could be immense. Trump would likely seek the political legitimation of being a ‘peace mediator,’ while Kim Jong Un would likely aim to secure tangible benefits within that framework. Kim’s goal is also quite clear. Under the guise of long-term disarmament negotiations, he seeks to secure a phased reduction of U.S. Forces in Korea, ultimately leading to the dissolution of the United Nations Command, the signing of a U.S.-North Korea peace treaty, and the normalization of diplomatic relations. This amounts to a calculated move to obtain complete, verifiable, and irreversible recognition from the United States of North Korea's status as a nuclear power. For Kim Jong Un, it’s a game in which he has little to lose.
In sum, the Republic of Korea will continue to face enormous challenges in the conduct of its foreign policy—in particular, managing its relations with a neighboring North Korea bent on rapidly strengthening both its conventional and nuclear forces and also maximizing its special, active military alliance with Russia—throughout 2026. At the same time, Seoul must seize upon any opening in U.S.-North Korea relations, Sino-North Korean relations, or Russo-North Korean relations in order to advance its own policy of engagement of Pyongyang toward two overlapping priorities: sustained rapprochement with North Korea with the long-term view toward achieving the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
| Review of North Korea’s External Relations in 2025
| Outlook on 2026: Doctrine of Parallel Development of Nuclear and Conventional Forces to be Unveiled in 2026
| North-South Korea Relations
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2) Jung Min-kyung, “North Korea may already possess 150 nuclear warheads, could reach 400 by 2040: think tank,” The Korea Herald, November 27, 2025. https://www.koreaherald.com/article/10625110
3) Zusanna Gwadera, “North Korea’s Hwasong-18 test,” International Institute for Strategic Studies, July 19, 2023. https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/online-analysis/2023/07/north-koreas-hwasong-18-test/
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6) 이정현, “北김정은 ‘공군에 새 전략자산과 임무…핵전쟁억제력 일익 담당’," 연합뉴스, 2025.11.30. https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20251130004452504?section=nk/news/all
7) ” 이정현, “北 김정은 ‘공군에 새 전략자산과 임무…핵전쟁억제력 일익 담당’," 연합뉴스, 2025.11.30. https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20251130004452504?section=nk/news/all
8) Jessle Yeung, “Kim Jong Un’s daughter has made her first public trip outside North Korea. Why is she in Beijing?” CNN, September 3, 2025. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/02/china/kim-jong-un-daughter-beijing-intl-hnk
9) Pablo Robles and Choe Sang-Hun, “How North Korea Promotes Kim’s ‘Dear Daughter’ as a Worthy Heir,” The New York Times, August 8, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/08/09/world/asia/kim-jong-un-daughter-kim-ju-ae-north-korea.html
10) “Family Outing,” Korea JoongAng Daily, April 27, 2025. https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2025-04-27/national/northKorea/Family-outing/2294671
11) Do-Hyoung Han, “North Korea’s 1st daughter makes debut at diplomatic event Kim Jong Un,” Radio Free Asia, May 12, 2025. https://www.rfa.org/english/korea/2025/05/12/north-korea-kim-daughter-diplomatic-debut-russia/
12) Pablo Robles and Choe Sang-Hun, “How North Korea Promotes Kim’s ‘Dear Daughter’ as a Worthy Heir,” The New York Times, August 8, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/08/09/world/asia/kim-jong-un-daughter-kim-ju-ae-north-korea.html
13) ” Pablo Robles and Choe Sang-Hun, “How North Korea Promotes Kim’s ‘Dear Daughter’ as a Worthy Heir,” The New York Times, August 8, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/08/09/world/asia/kim-jong-un-daughter-kim-ju-ae-north-korea.html
14) “Putin, Kim meet in Beijing; Kremlin says Russia not plotting against US,” Al Jazeera, September 3, 2025. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/3/putin-kim-meet-in-beijing-kremlin-says-russia-not-plotting-against-us
15) “Putin, Kim meet in Beijing; Kremlin says Russia not plotting against US,” Al Jazeera, September 3, 2025. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/3/putin-kim-meet-in-beijing-kremlin-says-russia-not-plotting-against-us
16) ” Nectar Gan, YoonJeong Seo, Yong Xiong, “Xi and Kim pledge deeper ties a day after unprecedented show of unity with Putin at Chinese military parade,” CNN, September 5, 2025. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/09/04/china/china-xi-kim-meeting-military-parade-intl-hnk
17) “North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong warns of nuclear response if provoked,” Al Jazeera, April 5, 2022. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/5/north-korea-warns-of-dreadful-nuclear-response-if-provoked
18) Kim Min-seo, Park Ju-hyun, “Seoul ends its broadcasts to Pyongyang,” The Chosun Ilbo, https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2025/07/22/XKKQNFK6SBBN3CMWII4V225O5Q/
19) ” Kim Min-seo & Joo Hee-yeon, “Kim Jong-un Open to U.S. Talks Without Denuclearization, Rejects South Korea, The Chosun Ilbo, September 23, 2025. https://www.chosun.com/english/north-korea-en/2025/09/23/GP3I3TPYKNF4ZM56UX3DUOTACQ/
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