Notwithstanding recent efforts by U.S. officials to reopen nuclear dialogue with the DPRK after the death of Kim Jong-il, a variety of factors today coincide to make it very unlikely that there will be meaningful progress in the long-stalled Six-Party Talks on DPRK denuclearization even if they do resume. This, in turn, is likely to accelerate a long-term realignment of regional policies vis-à-vis North Korea. Pyongyang has come to appear – and, after Kim’s death, seems to remain – entirely uninterested in denuclearization, remaining committed to retaining its nuclear weapons programs under essentially any conditions, and having additionally now ensured by its own actions (e.g., its 2006 and 2009 weapons tests and public confirmation of its longstanding uranium enrichment program) that the verification requirements for denuclearization are ones that the DPRK regime would not accept in any event. (Its cross-border provocations in 2010 have also helped harden the attitudes of key outside players toward traditional concessionary diplomacy, though American diplomats seem recently to have taken renewed interest in at least the appearance of negotiating, perhaps in order to forestall political crises during their country’s 2012 election year.) Nor does there seem to be much chance of change in DPRK attitudes, with ongoing leadership consolidation and potential domestic insecurity challenges being likely to push the regime in what are, if anything, more intransigent and conceivably even provocative positions. Meanwhile, domestic political factors in other would-be Six-Party participants during 2012 – including leadership succession issues in almost all the other parties –are likely, on the whole, to encourage attitudes less favorable to resumed nuclear negotiating. Yet this impasse has not stopped the East Asian region from continuing its rapid course of politico-economic change and development – a trajectory in which the DPRK is increasingly irrelevant except as a potential source of instability. (South Korea, in particular, is emerging as an increasingly important and sophisticated player on the world stage, even as the United States seeks to maintain a vigorous and engaged forward regional presence in diplomatic, economic, and military terms.) As East Asia develops a “post-DPRK” political order the security of which cannot be ensured except by ending Pyongyang’s role as a source of disruptive perturbations, regional leaders may increasingly turn to hard-nosed policies of coercive containment, more overt contingency planning for catastrophic collapse scenarios, and even interest in “regime-change” options. The future of DPRK denuclearization, in other words, may lie more in realpolitik pressures and maneuvers than in any meaningful resumption of concessionary diplomacy.