Nuclear relations between the United States and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) have spanned over five US administrations and three generations of North Korean leaders. For much of this timeline, the US has adhered to a policy of CVID (Complete, Verifiable, Irreversible Denuclearization) or “complete denuclearization.” Yet, if one looks at the explicit goal embedded in its wording, then the policy has clearly failed. As of today, the regime has anywhere from 40 to 100 nuclear warheads and a growing number of ICBMs, firmly establishing itself as a de facto nuclear weapons state. The persistence of US policy presents a curious puzzle: if CVID cannot realistically attain its own self-professed goal, then why has the US refused to relinquish it? Scholarship on US-DPRK nuclear relations is legion, dominated by security rationales and prescriptive, policy-oriented papers. Much of this literature brushes past the question of CVID persistence with rationales that, while partially valid, cannot fully account for the long-term costs that chip away at the logic of maintaining CVID. Residing at the nexus between critical constructivism, Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA), and political psychology, this thesis argues that the longstanding debate over the US’s foreign policy toward the DPRK has largely been driven by two beliefs about North Korea’s identity: North Korea as a determined nuclear state that will “never play nice” or as a conditional nuclear state that “seeks a new relationship” with the US and the West, i.e., normalization of relations. The belief that North Korea is an inherently bad faith actor (and hence, “will never play nice”) has been so pervasive that it represents the dominant orthodoxy in US foreign policy. By using discourse analysis and revealing mental heuristics from an array of textual sources, I argue that a cycle of recrimination arises in which US decision-makers and foreign policy elites “see what they wish to see.” Due to their cognitive biases, these competing factions perceive each side’s engagement strategies as destined to fail. As each side interprets outcomes in ways that only confirm their beliefs, CVID policy oddly becomes impervious to collapse. Ultimately, iterations of both proscribed and prescribed diplomatic efforts revert to the dominant orthodoxy. This dialectic reinforces CVID as the US’s official foreign policy toward the DPRK even as the goal of complete denuclearization becomes increasingly remote.

"Chapter One: Introduction 1
Research Context 1
The Origins of CVID: A Brief Timeline 3
Interpretations of CVID 9
The Research Puzzle 13
Four Rationales for Maintaining CVID 18
Main Argument 27
Thesis Outline 29
Main Method 30
Case Study Justification 37

Chapter Two: Explaining CVID Persistence 40
Literature Review 40
Theoretical Framework 48
Constructivism 48
Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) 54
Political Psychology 57
The Role of Beliefs 61
The Dominant Orthodoxy: North Korea Will Never Play Nice 62
The Heterodoxy: North Korea Seeks a New Relationship 66
Introducing the Perceptual Spiral 68
Applying Legro’s Two-Level Theory of Policy Change/Continuity 71
Defining Critical Events 72
Legro’s First Collapse Stage 74

Chapter Three: From the Korean War to the Perry Process 80
Cold War Identities 80
The International US Self 83
The (Oriental) Communist Other 83
The 1990s: The First Nuclear Crisis (1993-94) 90
The Collapse Stage: 1998 109
Mini-Critical Event: The 1998 Taepo-dong Launch 109
Conclusion 115

Chapter Four: Collapse of AF, Rise of CVID 118
Post-Cold War Identities 119
Collapse Stage: 2002–2003 132
The 2002 Kang-Kelly Meeting 132
Conclusion 157

Chapter Five: Bush 2.0 159
War on Terror Identities, Part 1 160
The Collapse Stage: 2006 170
The Critical Events: The July 2006 Missile Tests 170
The October Nuclear Test 170
Conclusion 194

Chapter Six: Strategic Patience: Breaking/Maintaining the Cycle 197
War on Terror Identities, Part 2 199
The Collapse Stage: 2009-2017 210
The Critical Events: The 2009 Missile and Nuclear Tests 210
2003 CVID vs. 2009 CVID: What is the difference 223
The 2012 Leap Day Deal 229
Conclusion 241

Chapter Seven: Conclusion 245
Recap of Key Findings 246
Analysis of Policy Persistence in Trump and Biden Administrations 255
CVID and the Trump Administration (2017-2021) 255
CVID and the Biden Administration (2021-2024) 265
The Perceptual Spiral: Cognitive Beliefs and the Policy Divide 272
Conclusion 279

Bibliography 282
Appendix 327"