RETHINKING AMERICA’S NORTH KOREA STRATEGY: NEW BOOK

 October 28, 2025 Release

Yale University Press, 560 pages

PURCHASE BOOK

October 22:. Carnegie Endowment for International  Peace, Washington, DC, 2:00-2:45pm (EDT), HYBRID

October 28: The Henry L. Stimson Center, Co-sponsored by the Institute for Science and International Security and the National Committee for North Korea, Washington, DC, 10:00-11:00am (EDT), HYBRID

October 30: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Kennedy School, Harvard University, 10:00 -11:30am (EDT), HYBRID

November 5: Program on Science and International Security, School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, By Invitation 

November 6: National Committee on American Foreign Policy, New York, NY, 6:00-8:00pm (EST), IN PERSON ONLY 

November 7: Center for Korean Research, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY, 1:00-2:30pm (EST), HYBRID

November 13: Korea-Pacific Program, UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS), San Diego, CA, 5:00-6:00pm (PST), VIRTUAL

November 18: Center for International Security and Arms Control, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), Stanford University, Stanford,  CA, Noon-1:15pm (PST), HYBRID

November 19: Commonwealth Club/World Affairs Council, San Francisco, CA, 5:30-6:30pm (PST), HYBRID

November 20: Pacific Council for International Policy, Los Angeles, CA, 6:00pm (PST), IN PERSON ONLY

.
December 8: National Bureau of Asian Research, Seattle, WA, TBA.

December 10: Pacific Forum, Honolulu, HI,  TBA
Honolulu International Forum, Honolulu, HI, By Invitation

December 11: East-West Center, Honolulu, HI, TBA

For almost four decades, the United States has tried to stop North Korea’s attempts to build nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them. In Fallout: The Inside Story of America’s Failure to Disarm North Korea Joel S. Wit, a former State Department official, takes readers to the front lines of nuclear negotiations, fierce policy debates and secret diplomatic gambits, recounting how perilously close the United States and North Korea have come, on various occasions, to nuclear confrontation. 

Based on more than 300 interviews with officials in Washington, Beijing, and Seoul, as well as with the author’s contacts in Pyongyang, this book chronicles how decades of pursuing North Korean nuclear disarmament have played out. 

Wit points to Barack Obama and Donald Trump as the two presidents most responsible for the failure to halt North Korea’s march to build a nuclear arsenal, since it was under their successive tenures that Pyongyang acquired the ability to threaten every city in North America. Wit also offers an unparalleled portrait of Kim Jong Un that refutes his caricature as impulsive and illogical. Like his father and his grandfather, Kim is a ruthless despot but also a canny and informed negotiator determined to secure his dictatorship’s future by exploring diplomacy or, failing that, by building a nuclear arsenal.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joel S. Wit is a distinguished fellow in Asian Security Studies at the Henry L. Stimson Center and a former U.S. State Department official. He is the coauthor with with Robert Gallucci and Daniel Poneman of Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis, the winner of the American Academy of Diplomacy’s 2004 prize for best book. He received his M.I.A. from Columbia University in 1979 and his B.A. from Bucknell University in 1976. He is a member of Asia Policy Point.