Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine has passed the 14-month mark, with no resolution in sight. It also has come with a potent, unintended consequence.

It has made the world forget about North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

Western powers have been justifiably preoccupied with Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, where Russian and Ukrainian troops have been locked in a war of attrition reminiscent of World War I trench warfare. In the meantime, however, the North Korean Communist regime has been hard at work stepping up its nuclear arsenal – in both technological advancement and inventory.

North Korea launched at least 95 ballistic and other missiles in 2022, the most Pyongyang has tested in the country’s history, according to The New York Times. This year, the pace hasn’t let up. As of April 13, North Korea had conducted at least 12 missile tests, Time magazine reported.

Kim’s nuclear arsenal includes short-range capability that can threaten the assets of the U.S. and its allies in the region. North Korea also has successfully tested a long-range, intercontinental ballistic missile with solid fuel technology. Those missiles do not have to go through an hourslong fueling process before the launch, and thus can be fired within minutes. That makes the weapon harder to detect and bring down preemptively.

North Korea and Kim’s regime were foremost on the minds of President Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, as they met in Washington last week. That meeting yielded an agreement between the two countries in which South Korea will play an integral part in U.S. strategic planning for deployment of nuclear weapons against North Korea in any conflict with Pyongyang, while Seoul also agrees to not develop its own nuclear weapons capability.

To put an exclamation point on the pact, the U.S. is dispatching a nuclear ballistic missile submarine to South Korea for a visit.

Given how much headway Kim has made in beefing up his nuclear weapons capability, the agreement, dubbed Washington Declaration, should have happened sooner. Nevertheless, it’s an important step toward firewalling South Korea and other U.S. allies in the region from the reckless belligerence of the North Korean regime.

Moving forward, the lesson for Biden and other Western leaders: Do not treat North Korea as some back-burner priority.

For decades, American presidents have floundered in crafting the right foreign policy approach toward Pyongyang. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush tried bargaining with North Korea but failed to steer it away from nuclear weapons pursuit. President Barack Obama took the tack of “strategic patience,” a policy of imposing isolation and sanctions on Pyongyang until it acquiesced. That didn’t work – isolation is a defining characteristic of North Korea’s existence.

Donald Trump turned American foreign policy toward North Korea into a global laughingstock. He swooned over Kim, becoming the first U.S. president to ever meet a North Korean head of state, afterward proclaiming nonsensically in a tweet, “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.” Two more meetings between Trump and Kim followed, and all the while, North Korea kept testing and ramping up its nuclear and missile capabilities.

Biden hasn’t had any success either. But accepting the reality that Kim has tied his regime’s survival to nuclear weapons expansion – and that the North Korean leader’s arsenal is fast becoming a pressing, worrisome threat – is crucial for the Biden administration. The agreements made with Yoon reflect that understanding.

That realization should have happened years ago. After John Bolton departed as Trump’s national security adviser, he told NPR that any policy aimed at cajoling Pyongyang into relinquishing its nuclear program amounted to wishful thinking.

Putin and Kim are very different leaders, but they have similarities even beyond their bellicosity and nuclear arsenals. They understand the value of playing for time, and they rely heavily on brinkmanship to achieve their aims. Putin remains an urgent, dangerous foe for the U.S. and its allies.

But it would be a grave mistake for the West to underestimate the threat Kim poses.

Ukraine is – and must be – a top-shelf priority for U.S. foreign policy. But so should North Korea.

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