In 2006 and 2009, North Korea conducted nuclear weapons tests. In addition, it launched missiles in an attempt to advance and showcase its related technologies. As a consequence, the fact of the matter is that the DPRK has repositioned itself today. This repositioning is of a fundamental nature and will not be impacted by any tactical maneuvering or short-term political concessions. In this paper, I claim that the opportunity to achieve a so-called grand bargain, a trade between Pyongyang and the remaining members of the Six-Party-Talks that would rid North Korea of its nuclear weapons capabilities in return for normalized relations and economic aid, has long passed. There remains little if any hope in rolling back North Korea's nuclear weapons program and have Pyongyang give up its nuclear arsenal. Over the course of the last decade North Korea's viewpoint of seeing its atomic bomb not as a bargaining chip anymore but as the ultimate solution to its security, political, and economic problems has increasingly hardened. In this sense, North Korea essentially re-conceptualized its own nuclear weapons program as its ultima ratio for its policy and security needs. In the paper, I am using the term "ultima ratio" as an analytical tool and in order to frame Pyongyang's re-positioning of its nuclear weapons program, moving it out of the diplomatic context and placing it firmly in the military political arena. I suggest that after the "diplomatic moment" of the mid-1990s, during which a "grand bargain might have been struck, had passed Pyongyang re-aligned its strategy. During the second half of the 1990s, Pyongyang was now viewing its nuclear weapons program as the tool to achieve actual, nuclear deterrence. At the end of the 1990s, North Korea had recast it from a tool for a grand diplomatic bargain to a military-political instrument. Since then, North Korea has been fairly consistently working on strengthening its position as a de facto nuclear power. On the basis of this analysis, I argue that one critical policy implication for all states dealing with North Korea, especially those involved in the so-called Six-Party-Talks, need to be mindful of the actual situation on the Korean Peninsula. To keep insisting on the North's full denuclearization is inconsistent with the changed reality Pyongyang created years ago. Moreover, holding out for the remotest chance to secure a "grand bargain" will also open to the door wide for North Korea to exploit this hope and secure an ongoing flow of concessions through the diplomatic process. This applies immediately in the context of the current discussions about restarting the Six-Party-Talks, because given the changed situation, new solutions that take the changed environment into account must urgently be formulated.