The narrative of Donald Trump’s supposed “bromance” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has become political folklore, sustained by memorable sound bites about “falling in love” and dramatic summit photo opportunities. But this romanticized account obscures a more complex reality: while Trump staged unprecedented diplomatic theater with Kim, his administration simultaneously implemented some of the harshest sanctions and restrictions on North Korea in decades.
The disconnect between Trump’s personal rhetoric and his administration’s actual policy reveals the limitations of personality-driven diplomacy and raises serious questions about whether the high-profile summits were more about political spectacle than substantive progress.
Maximum pressure in practice
Despite the warm personal exchanges between the two leaders, the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against North Korea represented a significant escalation in economic warfare against Pyongyang. While building on existing sanctions frameworks from previous administrations, Trump’s approach was notably more aggressive in scope and intensity.
The numbers tell the story. According to analysis by law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, in 2018 the United States added nearly 1,500 people, companies, and entities to Treasury Department-managed sanctions, nearly 50 percent more than in the second-highest year on record. One analyst writing for Foreign Policy noted that while previous administrations “generally focused on one or two major sanctions programs at a time,” the Trump administration was “aggressively pursuing sanctions programs against three countries as first-tier policy priorities—Iran, Venezuela, and North Korea.”
Specifically regarding North Korea, the Center for a New American Security found that Trump “drastically increased and sustained heavy sanctions against North Korea from 2017 to 2020.” The administration issued Executive Order 13810, creating an additional North Korea-specific sanctions authority that targeted illicit maritime and airborne trade, advanced technology imports, and party-led commercial activities. These measures went far beyond previous administrations’ approaches, aiming to cut North Korea off from the global financial system entirely.
The administration achieved significant diplomatic success in this effort, leading the U.N. Security Council—including China and Russia—to pass three new sanctions resolutions that expanded international pressure on North Korea. These measures went far beyond previous approaches, aiming to cut North Korea off from the global financial system entirely.
The sanctions weren’t just symbolic. They targeted Chinese banks and firms doing business with North Korea, threatened secondary sanctions on any companies trading with the regime, and imposed restrictions on ships and aircraft that had any contact with North Korean vessels. As one senior Trump administration official told Reuters in 2017, the goal was sweeping sanctions aimed at cutting North Korea off from the global financial system.
The American travel ban: A lasting restriction
Perhaps the most concrete and enduring policy legacy of the Trump administration’s North Korea approach was the travel ban imposed on American citizens in 2017. Following the death of American college student Otto Warmbier, who died shortly after being released from North Korean detention, the Trump administration prohibited U.S. passport holders from traveling to North Korea.
This wasn’t a minor administrative change. The State Department ban, which took effect on September 1, 2017, fundamentally altered the relationship between the two countries by cutting off people-to-people exchanges that had provided one of the few channels for communication and understanding. The restriction has been renewed annually ever since, surviving even into the Biden administration and extending until August 2026 under the current Trump administration.
The summit spectacle versus substantive results
The three Trump-Kim meetings generated enormous media attention and sky-high expectations for a diplomatic breakthrough. Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to meet with a North Korean leader—a genuinely historic achievement his predecessors had avoided. While the summits delivered little concrete progress on denuclearization, they may have served other strategic purposes that were obscured by inflated public expectations.
The prevention of escalation during this period shouldn’t be dismissed. North Korea conducted no nuclear tests between 2017-2019, and the dramatic tensions of late 2017—when Trump threatened “fire and fury” and Kim tested intercontinental ballistic missiles—gave way to a more stable, if unproductive, diplomatic track. If the primary goal was conflict prevention rather than immediate denuclearization, the summits arguably succeeded by lowering the temperature and maintaining dialogue.
But as an analyst at the Wilson Center noted, “the summits themselves delivered little of substance for either side.” Kim offered only the same vague commitments to denuclearization that his predecessors had given, while Trump rejected Kim’s proposal to dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear facility in return for sanctions relief. The Hanoi summit ended abruptly when Trump walked away from negotiations, and their final DMZ meeting “amounted to barely more than a photocall.”
The reality behind the rhetoric
The contradiction between Trump’s personal diplomacy and his administration’s policy reveals the fundamental tension in his North Korea strategy. While he praised Kim in public and claimed they had developed a genuine relationship—even asserting they “fell in love” through their correspondence—his government was simultaneously implementing unprecedented levels of pressure on the country.
This approach may have reflected a calculated strategy: using personal charm to keep diplomatic channels open while applying maximum economic pressure. But it also created confusion about American intentions and may have made Kim less likely to make genuine concessions, knowing that the president’s personal assurances could be contradicted by his own administration’s actions. Of course, it is also unclear – given how little we know about North Korea’s foreign policy – whether Kim intended meanginful concessions, regardless of Trump’s approach.
Ultimately, however, Trump’s policy legacy speaks for itself. North Korea’s nuclear program continued advancing throughout Trump’s presidency. Despite the diplomatic engagement, intelligence assessments found no evidence that Kim was serious about eliminating his nuclear weapons. The regime conducted no nuclear tests during the summit period, but this pause proved temporary—North Korea has since revealed new intercontinental ballistic missiles and continues developing its nuclear capabilities.
Challenges for future diplomacy
The Trump-Kim experience offers important lessons about the limits of personality-driven diplomacy, but it also raises questions about the sustainability of the economic pressure that was meant to complement it. While Trump’s sanctions regime was more aggressive than his predecessors’, its effectiveness has been significantly undermined in recent years.
As Victor Cha noted in Foreign Affaris recently, “Squeezing North Korea’s economy—as the Obama, first Trump, and Biden administrations tried to do—has been made impossible by Russia’s and China’s noncompliance with international sanctions.” North Korea is now “flush with economic support from Russia and China,” with satellite imagery showing “unprecedented levels of grain and fuel pouring southward by rail from Russia into North Korea.” The U.N. monitoring panel that tracked sanctions compliance was disbanded in April 2024 after Russia vetoed its renewal, further weakening the international enforcement mechanism.
This means that “lifting sanctions is no longer as attractive an incentive as it was in 2018, given the collapse of the U.N. sanctions regime.” The economic pressure that was supposed to drive North Korea to the negotiating table has been largely neutralized by geopolitical changes, particularly the strengthening Russia-North Korea partnership amid the Ukraine war.
The disconnect between Trump’s public praise for Kim and his administration’s harsh sanctions regime ultimately served neither diplomatic engagement nor maximum pressure effectively. North Korea faced severe economic constraints but perhaps had little incentive to make real concessions when it couldn’t trust that any agreement would survive changes in Trump’s mood or Twitter account.
Looking ahead, any successful North Korea policy will need to reconcile these contradictions. Effective diplomacy requires consistency between public messaging and actual policy, realistic expectations about what personal relationships can accomplish, and a clear understanding that photo opportunities, however historic, are no substitute for substantive negotiations backed by credible commitments.
The “bromance” narrative makes for compelling political theater, but it obscures the more complex reality of a relationship defined by mutual mistrust, strategic calculation, and ultimately, policy failure. Understanding this reality is essential for developing more effective approaches to one of America’s most challenging national security challenges.
