[hitekker]

IIRC, one of the highest profile North Korean defectors said that Jimmy Carter's interference in Bill Clinton's Korea strategy basically gave North Korea another decade to build an atom bomb. After that regime got the bomb, they became un-invadeable.

"Passcode to the Third Floor" describes this instance and other missed opportunities to undermine the North Korean regime.

[rtkwe]

That was definitely the last time the US got particularly close to a deal with North Korea that would limit it's nuclear ambitions but in a very Trump-like fashion (though to be fair this is very common) Bush came in claiming he could get a better deal and ultimately got basically nothing.

One funny side event to all this was when North Korea accidentally (?) revealed their secret uranium enrichment program when providing records from their Yongbyon reactor. They claimed at the time they didn't have a uranium enrichment program but there were traces of HEU on the records provided along with some aluminum tube samples and that scuppered the talks in 2008.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jun-21-fg-korea...