ABSTRACT
In the midst of the reconfiguration of US foreign policy, North Korea’s behaviour and its relationship with the USA was one of the key foreign policy issues that the Trump administration had to confront. North Korea also conducted its highest-ever number of annual missile tests in 2017, including ICBMs capable of reaching the US mainland. The enmity between North Korea and the USA due to Pyongyang’s ever more sophisticated tests and an increasing verbal brinkmanship between Kim Jong-nam and Donald Trump led to the real possibility that the USA would launch a strike on North Korea resulting in war in the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang’s behaviour during the first year of the Trump administration indicated a lack of learning, meaning that the Kim Jong Un regime neither changed its key goal of building a nuclear and missile deterrent nor changed its tactics.
