Fallout: The Inside Story of America’s Failure to Disarm North Korea

Name: Fallout: The Inside Story of America’s Failure to Disarm North Korea
Start: 2026-03-09T15:00:00+00:00
End: 2026-03-09T16:00:00+00:00

Event information

Organised by Leiden Asia Centre

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For nearly four decades, six American presidents have sought to halt North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles designed to deliver them. Drawing on more than 300 interviews with officials in Washington, Seoul, and Beijing—as well as his own direct engagement with North Korean officials over three decades—Joel Wit offers a definitive account of that effort in his new book, Fallout: The Inside Story of How America Failed to Disarm North Korea.

In this upcoming book talk webinar, Wit will examine why successive U.S. administrations failed to prevent North Korea’s emergence as a nuclear-armed state, assess policy options for addressing the threat to American cities, and analyze the accelerating nuclear dynamics in Northeast Asia. He will also discuss the prospects for renewed high-level diplomacy, including the possibility of another summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, and what such engagement might realistically achieve.

This event is co-organized by Marialaura De Angelis from Track2Asia and Leiden Asia Centre Korea researcher Elena Guido.

Preliminary Agenda

15:00 - 15:30 | Book Presentation by Joel Wit

15:30 - 16:00 | Moderated Q&A

About the speaker(s)

Joel Wit

Joel S. Wit is a Distinguished Fellow in Asian and Security Studies at the Stimson Center. As a U.S. State Department official, he helped negotiate and later oversee implementation of the 1994 U.S.–DPRK Agreed Framework, holding extensive talks with North Korean military and nuclear officials until leaving government in 2002. He also co-founded 38 North, a leading analytical platform on North Korea, and is widely recognized for his long-standing policy and analytical engagement with DPRK nuclear diplomacy.

Glyn Ford

Glyn Ford is a leading European expert on East Asia and the Korean Peninsula. During more than 25 years in the European Parliament, he served on the Foreign Affairs and International Trade Committees and was active in delegations to Japan, Korea, China, and ASEAN. He also acted as EU Chief Election Observer in Indonesia and Aceh.

After leaving Parliament in 2009, he founded Polint while continuing his non-profit engagement on DPRK and regional issues through Track2Asia. He is the author of North Korea on the Brink and Talking to North Korea, and serves on the boards of the North East Asia Economic Forum and the Pacific Century Institute.