President Truman’s restraint from using atomic weapons in Korea impresses many historians because at that point, the United States was the only country in the world with offensive nuclear weapons capability. The Soviet Union had tested its first weapon only the year prior and wouldn’t have nuclear bombers for a few more years, while the Chinese wouldn’t start its tests for a few years. Of course, they would all catch up eventually.

North Korea is surrounded by nuclear weapons: Russian nukes, Chinese nukes, and American ones in South Korea. And events would increasingly isolate the tiny country. “The Sino-Soviet split of the late 1950s and the U.S.-led détente with China in 1972,” explains the Pacific Forum foreign policy think tank, “supported North Korea’s aspirations for developing nuclear weapons.” They quote North Korea’s founder, Kim Il-sung, as saying that nuclear weapons are necessary to “protect its sovereignty against the internal and external enemies.”

The Russians began importing radioactive materials from North Korea in 1947 — before the country technically existed — and China would follow suit after the war, according to a timeline from the Nuclear Threat Initiative. According to a Stanford study, even though only one mine is publicly acknowledged, there are up to 18 possible uranium mines in the country. And North Korea is encircled with nukes, is headed by a family of paranoid leaders, and is one of less than two dozen uranium-producing countries — yeah, they likely pursued nuclear weapons.

China is so ancient that the American Historical Association calls it “the oldest living civilization,” with over 3,500 years of written history and an archaeological record nearly three times as long. China’s borders expanded and contracted multiple times over the millennia, and what counted as “China” at any given time could be kind of complicated. Per Al-Jazeera, this uncertainty complicates China’s current international relationships when they make “historic” claims to territory that is generally recognized as belonging to nearly a dozen other countries. And this made for delicious irony when two North Korean leaders asked two Chinese leaders in a row to recognize Korean sovereignty to northeast China. 

As reported by Asian Nikkei, Chinese historian Shen Zhihua said former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il once demanded to inspect the Chinese side of the border. The move was allegedly driven by former Chairman Mao, who told his father — former leader Kim Il-sung — that “the entire ‘northeast’ [of China] belongs to us.” North Korea has yet to press these claims hard because the two nations are officially allies. Nevertheless, a tense relationship has persisted between them. According to Korean magazine Hankyoreh, Chairman Mao objected to Kim Il-sung’s quest for a nuclearized North, asking, “Does Choson [North Korea] really need to go to that length?” When China engaged South Korea diplomatically in 1992, the North was only further encouraged to go that length — alone. In 2017, Professor Shen said the DPRK’s nuclear antics mean that “[North] Korea is now China’s potential enemy.”

North Koreans are marinated in propaganda and indoctrination. In an interview with Vox, professor of Korean philosophy Don Baker said their national philosophy of Juche is basically a state religion. “Human beings don’t need God,” he said. “They now have the Kim family.” And the pinnacle of Juche expression is through North Korea’s nuclear might. 

In a 2019 blog for the Wilson Center, North Korea Associated Press reporter Jean Lee spoke of the country’s use of military propaganda. “During my years reporting in North Korea, I saw rockets on posters, stamps, and calendars,” she said. “Every child wanted to be photographed in front of the rockets at the kimilsungia and kimjongilia flower shows.” She described going to the capital city’s biggest supermarket and buying school notebooks decorated with missiles. Children especially are targets of the regime’s indoctrination, and North Korean students are literally taught to hate America and support everything that could destroy it. “And there’s no illusion that these are rockets meant for space,” said Lee, “the walls of kindergartens I have visited feature murals with tanks and missiles in flight — and children cheering them on.”

The propaganda suggests that having nukes is evidence the Kim family has delivered on its promises. Lee recounts a scene from one of their most popular TV shows where the characters stop their antics to celebrate a Korean nuclear missile launch against the U.S. “It’s a telling indication of how the weapons are used as a way to build a sense of pride and unity among North Korea’s long-suffering population,” she said.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the Cold War was just a chain of intercontinental ballistic missile factories cranking out weapons every year. But in fact, efforts to reduce the growth, dissemination, use, and very existence of nuclear weapons began early on. By 1968, the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was introduced in the United Nations for signature by member nations. “The Treaty represents the only binding commitment in a multilateral treaty to the goal of disarmament by the nuclear-weapon States,” says the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs. The NPT has not, unfortunately, been very effective. When it was designed, there were only five states with nuclear weapons (U.S., U.K., Russia, China, and France), but now, even though 191 countries signed the Treaty, there are near twice as many. 

According to the Arms Control Association, three nations (India, Pakistan, and Israel) have yet to sign the NPT. And even though Israel “does not admit or deny having nuclear weapons,” all three “are known to possess nuclear weapons.” In 1985, due to Soviet pressure, North Korea actually signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and publicly committed to a denuclearized Korean peninsula seven years later, per the Council on Foreign Relations. Still, they threatened to withdraw from the NPT just one year later over the indignation of “inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency” and finally withdrew from it in 2003.

In their declaration of withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 2003, the North Korean government said flatly that they “have no intention to produce nuclear weapons and our nuclear activities at this stage will be confined only to peaceful purposes such as the production of electricity.” During the first rounds of the “Six Party Talks” (nuclear negotiations involving North and South Korea, USA, China, Japan, and Russia) that began later that same year, North Korea flatly “denies having a uranium-enrichment program,” Per the Council on Foreign Relations. But Global News reported that the CIA suspected they “probably” already had a couple of plutonium warheads by that point.  

The Six Party Talks proceeded apace, producing nothing except further angry rhetoric from North Korea and the U.S. In 2005, over $25 million of laundered North Korean assets were essentially seized by the U.S. Treasury, creating further tensions between the two in the talks. Later that year, a deal was reached: The U.S. promised not to attack North Korea, which promised to cease developing nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, the North tested their first nuclear bomb almost exactly a year later.

The United Nations condemned the test. The Security Council passed a unanimous resolution to place “sanctions on the DPRK, calling for it to return immediately to multilateral talks on the issue.”