The Upcoming UN General Assembly:
Pursuing Stability on the Korean Peninsula
Amid Multilateral Non-Proliferation Sanctions on North Korea
Eunsook Chung
Emeritus Senior Fellow, The Sejong Institute
This September, the 81st session of the UN General Assembly will convene at UN Headquarters in New York. Founded in 1945 with 51 member states, the United Nations has grown over the past 81 years into a global organization comprising 193 member states. The General Assembly serves as a diplomatic forum in which all member states participate on the principles of universality and equality to deliberate on vital international issues. It also serves as a decision-making body that adopts resolutions on the basis of one state, one vote. Although General Assembly resolutions adopted by a two-thirds majority or by consensus are not, in principle, legally binding on member states, they carry significant political, diplomatic, and moral authority as expressions of the collective will of the international community.
This stands in contrast to resolutions of the UN Security Council, which is composed of five permanent members with veto power and ten non-permanent members and bears primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security. Under the UN Charter, Security Council resolutions adopted under its Chapter VII authority are legally binding on all UN member states.
At the beginning of each session in September, the General Assembly traditionally devotes approximately six days in late September to the “General Debate,” during which world leaders present their countries’ positions on major global challenges, typically in speeches of around 15 minutes. The General Debate provides an opportunity for all member states to articulate their views regardless of their region, size, wealth, or level of development. This year’s General Debate is scheduled to begin on September 22.
President Trump’s Critique of Multilateralism and the Need for UN Reform
At last year’s General Debate, held to mark the UN’s 80th anniversary, U.S. President Donald Trump drew considerable attention by openly expressing skepticism about UN multilateralism and arguing that the organization has handled issues such as immigration, climate change, and conflict management poorly. Indeed, the United States—which has historically been the largest contributor to the UN budget since the organization’s inception—has been reluctant to make timely contributions for 2025–2026 and has decided to withdraw from or defund roughly 30 UN-affiliated bodies. The White House stated in January 2026 that these measures were prompted by concerns over activities contrary to U.S. interests, a lack of capacity to implement policies effectively, and institutional inefficiency.
This approach contrasted with that of other major world leaders, who acknowledged the UN’s achievements over the past 80 years, despite periods of turbulence, and called for more effective multilateralism amid growing uncertainties in the international order. Under pressure from the Trump administration, UN Secretary-General António Guterres launched the UN 80 Initiative in March 2025, focusing on institutional restructuring and maximizing the Organization’s impact with limited financial resources.
Against this backdrop, the theme of this year’s 81st General Assembly General Debate is “Restoring Trust, Managing Transformation: A United Nations that delivers for all.” For 2026, the General Assembly approved a regular budget of $3.45 billion, representing a sharp reduction from previous years, including a 15 percent cut in financial resources and an approximately 19 percent reduction in staffing levels.
Twenty Years of the UN North Korea Sanctions Regime: Progress and Current Status
North Korea is the only country to have announced its withdrawal from the NPT and the only country to have conducted nuclear tests in the 21st century. It has repeatedly issued nuclear and missile threats, both rhetorically and through actions, against South Korea, Japan, and the United States.
Following North Korea’s first nuclear test in 2006, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1718 (2006), establishing the first UN sanctions regime against North Korea under Chapter VII of the UN Charter (“Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression”). All 193 UN Member States are obligated to implement the measures stipulated in the resolution. This was made possible by the ability of the five permanent members of the Security Council to reach a consensus that North Korea’s nuclear and missile activities constituted a threat to international peace and security.
The objective of the sanctions regime is to compel North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program and return to compliance with the NPT and its IAEA safeguards obligations. To this end, the Security Council introduced measures restricting military trade and luxury goods, as well as targeted sanctions—including asset freezes and travel bans—against individuals and entities involved in proliferation-related activities.
After 2006, North Korea conducted five additional nuclear tests and numerous launches of long-range ballistic missiles, prompting the Security Council to adopt a total of 10 sanctions resolutions on North Korea over an 11-year period through 2017. As the scope and depth of the sanctions expanded with each successive resolution, the North Korea sanctions regime became one of the most comprehensive and stringent sanctions regimes administered by the Security Council.
During this 11-year period, none of the five permanent members exercised its veto. All 10 resolutions were adopted unanimously, providing the foundation for the sanctions regime that remains in place today. Despite the compromises and concessions required along the way, the five permanent members, each possessing veto power, were able to come together around a shared commitment to nuclear non-proliferation.
Member States are required to submit Implementation Reports to the Sanctions Committee (the Committee Established Pursuant to Resolution 1718) within specified timeframes, as required by each relevant resolution. They are also expected to submit Non-compliance Reports when they identify cases of North Korean non-compliance with or violations of UN sanctions. Since 2009, a Panel of Experts, initially composed of seven and later eight experts specializing in areas such as nuclear issues, missiles, law, and finance, has supported the Sanctions Committee in fulfilling its mandate by providing guidance, gathering information, conducting analysis, and making recommendations to strengthen the effectiveness of the sanctions regime.
Nevertheless, rather than abandoning its nuclear weapons program, North Korea has continued to expand its nuclear and missile capabilities while routinely evading or violating sanctions, as repeatedly documented in the Panel of Experts’ reports. In other words, the sanctions regime has not fully achieved its intended objectives. However, a close examination of the Panel’s reports suggests that the costs of non-compliance imposed on the North Korean leadership have increased over time, making it difficult to conclude that sanctions have had no practical impact.
At the same time, military cooperation between North Korea and Russia since 2022 has involved numerous activities that violate or circumvent UN sanctions against North Korea, posing a major challenge to the international community and raising difficult questions about how it should respond. Furthermore, the dissolution of the Panel of Experts in April 2024 following Russia’s veto dealt a serious blow not only to the effectiveness and credibility of the sanctions regime but also to confidence in the UN’s ability to monitor and enforce its own sanctions measures as the organization enters its 81st year.
According to its final report, issued in March 2024 shortly before the Panel’s mandate expired, the Panel was investigating evidence concerning North Korea’s arms transfers to Russia in connection with the war in Ukraine.
“North Korea Fatigue”
During last year’s UN General Assembly General Debate, substantive remarks concerning North Korea’s nuclear program came primarily from the leaders of South Korea and Japan, underscoring the fact that these two countries are directly exposed to the North Korean threat. Then-Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba stated that North Korea’s nuclear and missile development posed a grave threat to international peace and security and called for the full implementation of the Security Council’s sanctions resolutions aimed at the “complete denuclearization” of North Korea.
President Lee Jae-myung introduced the idea that the denuclearization process should begin by halting the further development of North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities, followed by their reduction and, ultimately, their dismantlement, recognizing that “denuclearization is difficult to achieve in the short term.”
On the final day of the General Debate, Kim Son-gyong, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of North Korea, stated that demands for denuclearization were tantamount to demanding the surrender of North Korea’s sovereignty and its right to survival.
Against the backdrop of recent messages from President Trump signaling a possible resumption of dialogue with Kim Jong-un, attention is now focused on what messages will be delivered from the General Debate stage at this year’s UN General Assembly.
At least during last year’s General Debate, among the leaders of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council—the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, and France—the North Korean nuclear issue was overshadowed by other issues regarded as more urgent. In recent years, a range of pressing global challenges has taken center stage, including the war in Ukraine, instability in the Middle East, conflicts in Africa, climate change, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), AI governance, and reform of the UN Security Council.
Furthermore, intensified “great-power strategic competition” in recent years has made consensus within the Security Council increasingly difficult to achieve. The internal dynamics of the Council now reflect a widening strategic divide between the P2 (China and Russia) and the P3 (the United States, the United Kingdom, and France), compared with the situation in 2006, when the North Korea sanctions regime was established, or in 2017, when the most recent sanctions resolution was adopted. This shift was symbolically demonstrated in September 2025, when Kim Jong-un attended China’s Victory Day commemorations and appeared alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Future ROK Policies on International Non-Proliferation Sanctions against North Korea
■ South Korea now faces two fundamental challenges in addressing the North Korean nuclear issue.
First, the UN Security Council is deeply divided, and the veto power of its permanent members has increasingly paralyzed the Council’s ability to act. Despite evidence that military cooperation between Russia and North Korea involves activities that violate Security Council sanctions resolutions, the issue has not been meaningfully addressed within the Council.
Second, North Korea’s nuclear capabilities continue to expand. According to the Arms Control Association, North Korea was estimated to have assembled approximately 50 nuclear warheads as of January 2024.
■ Considering the challenges outlined above, several suggestions can be made regarding the international sanctions regime and efforts to maintain peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.
First, following the dissolution of the UN Panel of Experts in April 2024, the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT) was established outside the UN framework to assume some of the monitoring functions previously performed by the Panel. Eleven like-minded countries have joined the MSMT: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States. South Korea should actively participate in the MSMT, working alongside its member states to encourage all 193 UN member states to faithfully implement the Security Council’s sanctions measures.
At the same time, given the current deadlock within the Security Council, South Korea could work with MSMT member states to disseminate the findings of the MSMT’s reports to UN member states and seek the adoption of a UN General Assembly resolution. Although such a resolution would not be legally binding, it could serve as a significant political, moral, and normative statement reaffirming the international community’s commitment to implementing the existing sanctions regime.
Second, while continuing to signal that the door to dialogue remains open, South Korea should maintain the principle of participating in international efforts to uphold sanctions against North Korea through the UN and other relevant institutions unless and until Pyongyang resolves the issues underlying the sanctions regime.
Third, denuclearization presupposes highly detailed agreements specifying what is to be dismantled, when and how the process is to be carried out, and how compliance is to be verified. Hastily accepting North Korea’s stated intention to denuclearize—or, worse, offering guarantees of such an outcome to third countries—could lead to another diplomatic impasse.
Fourth, South Korea must maintain a constant crisis-management posture to prevent and respond to accidental military clashes or localized armed conflict. Given that North Korea has become a de facto nuclear-armed state and has repeatedly issued threats against South Korea, a more robust deterrence posture must incorporate the nuclear dimension of the ROK–U.S. alliance. In this regard, South Korea should ensure that it receives credible extended deterrence commitments from the United States, including the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Because this approach is broadly consistent with Japan’s deterrence posture, South Korea should maintain close communication with Japan and draw on its experience and preparations in this area.
Fifth, regarding China and Russia, South Korea and Japan could argue that they need to maintain nuclear latency if North Korean denuclearization cannot be achieved through the UN sanctions regime. Furthermore, they should be capable of gathering information on violations and instances of non-compliance arising from China’s and Russia’s dealings with North Korea, and of demanding explanations and corrective measures through both bilateral channels and multilateral platforms such as the UN General Assembly and the 2027 NPT Review Conference.
Sixth, regarding North Korea’s human rights issues, the 80th UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on the issue last year, marking 21 consecutive years of unanimous international solidarity in calling for improvements in the human rights situation in North Korea. The South Korean government participated as a co-sponsor alongside multiple member states, a role it should continue to undertake and actively pursue in future international forums. The resolution’s condemnatory provisions include criticism that North Korea allocates excessive resources to military buildup, including nuclear and missile development, rather than to public welfare.