Donald Trump wants to meet with him again. Vladimir Putin needs him to sustain his war in Ukraine. And Xi Jinping chose a visit to Pyongyang as his first, and so far only, foreign trip of 2026. Kim Jong-un, the supreme leader of secretive North Korea, has managed to make the United States, Russia and China compete for his attention. Despite leading a nuclear-armed regime long subjected to international sanctions and presiding over a tiny economy, Kim appears to have found a formula for exerting influence over Washington, Moscow and Beijing: offering each of them something different, and something none wants left in the hands of the others.

“Kim has deliberately sought to increase North Korea’s strategic value to several major powers, rather than return to the kind of dependence and isolation it faced years ago,” Rachel Minyoung Lee, senior researcher in the Korea program at the U.S. think tank Stimson, explains by email.

The outcome is less the result of a grand strategy than of a series of opportunities skillfully exploited. Kim could not have foreseen Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or that ties with Moscow would evolve into a military alliance, Lee notes. But he has proved “adept” at turning the needs of others into strategic leverage, she argues.

The latest opportunity emerged last Monday, just hours before U.S. and South Korean forces began their main joint summer military exercises. Trump unexpectedly ordered the Pentagon to “substantially” reduce U.S. participation, citing the high cost of the drills and his dissatisfaction with Seoul’s level of support during the war with Iran.

Trump justified the decision in a post on Truth Social, where he also emphasized that the exercises make North Korea uncomfortable, despite the fact that, he said, the country had been “unthreatening and respectful” since his return to the White House. The Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises ended on Friday, six days ahead of schedule. There is no precedent for military drills of this scale being cut short at Washington’s request once they have already begun.

For Pyongyang, which sees the exercises as rehearsals for an invasion, the reduction amounts to a concession secured before negotiations have even begun, Ramón Pacheco Pardo, professor of international relations at King’s College London, says by phone.

A pivotal player

Trump is turning his attention back to Pyongyang at a time of mounting domestic pressure and frustration over his inability to achieve the results he had hoped for in the Middle East. The images of his three meetings with Kim between 2018 and 2019, the only meetings ever held between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader, made headlines around the world. Although the process ultimately ended without an agreement, the Republican still portrays it as one of the major achievements of his first term. In recent days, he has highlighted his “great relationship” with Kim and said he is considering another meeting, perhaps in the fall, when he travels to Shenzhen, China, for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ summit.

Seven years after their last handshake, however, that photo opportunity comes at a higher price. Kim Yo-jong, the North Korean leader’s sister and one of his closest aides, has denied that the two sides are engaged in negotiations, though she has left the door ajar to dialogue if Washington changes its policy toward Pyongyang. The personal relationship between her brother and the U.S. president, she noted, “remains excellent.”

Still, Jenny Town, director of the publication 38 North, stresses in a phone interview that Pyongyang should not be underestimated. “North Korea has options,” Town says, noting that cooperation with Russia is designed to outlast the war and that North Korea has recently expanded ties with other countries at odds with the West. Relations with China, meanwhile, have entered what Chinese and North Korean state media in June described as a “new historic stage.”

Although sanctions continue to weigh on the country and China’s economic support remains indispensable, there is “no longer any urgency” for Pyongyang to sit down and talk with the United States, Town stresses. That gives Kim room to wait, raise his demands and decide when it suits him to turn back toward Washington. “He believes he is a key player in reshaping the world order” and “on equal footing with his partners,” Town says.

The war in Ukraine has made clear that this ambition extends far beyond rhetoric. North Korea has become a crucial supplier for Russia’s war of attrition in a conflict that has now stretched into its fifth year. The U.K.-based Open Source Centre estimates that, since mid-2023, Pyongyang has shipped between eight million and 11 million artillery shells and rockets, while Ukrainian intelligence believes North Korean supplies have at times accounted for nearly half of the ammunition used by Russian artillery on the front lines.

Weapons have been accompanied by manpower. Since 2024, some 15,000 North Korean troops have fought in Russia’s Kursk region. Kyiv estimates that around 8,500 North Korean personnel are currently deployed in Russia, including engineers, sappers and drone operators. “North Korea can now present itself as a country that contributes to the security of another major power,” Lee notes.

It is a significant reversal of roles: a state long treated as a problem to be contained by others is now providing ammunition and troops to a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. The relationship has continued to deepen since Putin and Kim signed a strategic partnership treaty in 2024 committing the two countries to assist one another in the event of an attack.

China steps up its diplomacy

The exchange has also reduced Pyongyang’s isolation. In return for its military support, North Korea has obtained revenue, oil, economic cooperation, combat experience for its troops and, possibly, military technology transfers. Russia has also helped weaken one of the main instruments of pressure on North Korea: despite U.N. sanctions, it openly imports North Korean weapons and, in 2024, vetoed the renewal of the panel of experts responsible for monitoring those sanctions. The sanctions remain in force, but they have lost their main independent oversight mechanism.

The burgeoning Russia-North Korea partnership has also altered the balance with Beijing. A European diplomat based in the Chinese capital argues that North Korea’s involvement in Ukraine has forced China’s leadership to reassess its calculations. Although China remains by far North Korea’s main economic partner and traditional ally, the existence of a Russian alternative has reduced Beijing’s ability to impose conditions. That added room for maneuver has unsettled Chinese policymakers, who in recent months have accelerated high-level diplomatic engagement with Pyongyang.

Kim returned to China in September 2025 after six years without meeting Xi, and stood alongside the Chinese leader and Putin during the grand military parade in Tiananmen Square marking the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and the end of World War II.

Xi traveled to Pyongyang in June for the first time since 2019, in what remains his only foreign trip this year. For China, keeping North Korea within its orbit means preserving a partner against the U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula, preventing instability along its border and ensuring a central role in any crisis that could upset the regional balance. During his visit, Xi reaffirmed a friendship “forged in blood” and a bond of comradeship and mutual trust that, he said, has withstood both the passage of time and a changing international landscape.

The official accounts of the meeting also contained a notable omission. There was no mention of denuclearization, which for years had been one of Beijing’s stated objectives on the Korean Peninsula. Although China has not formally abandoned that goal, it has avoided raising it publicly in the face of an emboldened Kim, who insists that North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is not up for negotiation.

“Kim is trying to make North Korea impossible for the United States to ignore,” Lee says. The researcher argues that Kim’s nuclear arsenal is no longer merely a guarantee of the regime’s survival. It has also become a source of power, autonomy and international status. “He wants to be treated as a normal actor,” Town says, “and to engage with the international community on his own terms.”

And Trump, with his appetite for attention and recognition, may be particularly receptive to that ambition. While previous administrations maintained the complete denuclearization of North Korea as their objective, the U.S. president has gone so far as to refer to the country as a “nuclear power.” That does not amount to formally recognizing North Korea as a nuclear-armed state, his administration still officially calls for denuclearization, but it breaks with the caution of previous governments and raises the possibility that any future negotiations may not begin with demands for the dismantling of Pyongyang’s arsenal.

Pacheco Pardo believes the U.S. president has made it quite clear that his priority is to deal directly with Kim and secure an outcome “he can sell as a victory.”

For now, Kim does not appear to be in any hurry. But a future opening from Washington, and above all any easing of sanctions, would help him continue to diversify North Korea’s international relationships. “North Korea does not want to depend on anyone,” explains Pacheco Pardo.

Having strengthened its ties with Russia and repaired its relationship with China, Pyongyang can afford to wait and assess what it might be able to extract from Trump.

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“I got three beautiful kids.” Applause from the audience. “The point is, I have four kids altogether, but three of them are beautiful. When that fourth one sneaks up on you… Aaaah! Don’t do that to daddy, I thought an orangutan broke into the house.” Laughter and more applause.

The comedian Bill Dwyer is speaking on Comics Unleashed, the show that since May has occupied CBS’s coveted late-night slot. It replaced veteran host Stephen Colbert, who from 2015 had mocked politicians of every stripe in the United States, until he ran afoul of Donald Trump. The Republican demanded his head, and CBS handed it over, in what the network described as “a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night.”

Now, instead of interviews with major public figures (Paul McCartney appeared on the show’s final episode) and sharp commentary on the day’s events, Americans are getting a daily dose of harmless jokes that offend no one. The punchlines are about how owners of small dogs can’t be trusted, or the absurdity of excessive airport security measures. Family-friendly humor in a decidedly non-family-friendly time slot: 11:35 p.m. on the East Coast.

The decision to replace The Late Show with Comics Unleashed may look like a simple programming change. In reality, it reflects far deeper currents in U.S. society, politics and economics. The pressures exerted by the Trump administration, undeniable as they are, have arrived at a particularly vulnerable moment for late-night television.

A toxic mix of young viewers’ declining interest in traditional television, political polarization and the omnipresence of smartphones has made it increasingly difficult to gather an entire family in the living room to watch the same program. The result is shrinking audiences, declining revenues and rising costs. Colbert’s demise is a symptom of the broader decline of political satire on U.S. television.

“The pressure from this administration is enormous. Large corporations have a great deal to lose if they refuse its demands,” says Dannagal G. Young, a communications professor at the University of Delaware, speaking by video call. “Political satire is still very much alive, but it is moving away from television and onto other platforms, particularly social media.”

Comics Unleashed is hardly new. CBS’s quick fix for replacing Colbert was to move into that slot a program that had already been around for two decades and cost a fraction of what traditional late-night shows typically do.

Its creator is Byron Allen, a comedian turned media mogul who, at 65, has built a communications and entertainment empire. As he has explained in various interviews, he offered CBS a solution to a business that was becoming increasingly difficult to sustain: he would pay the network $15 million to air Comics Unleashed in exchange for keeping most of the advertising time and selling it himself. It was the same business model that had helped make him wealthy.

The new show has triggered a sharp ratings decline. In its first weeks, CBS’s audience in the time slot fell by roughly 60%. The paradox is that, despite those figures, the arrangement may still be working financially for the network.

Less audience, more money

“CBS has won big-time because they have zero production costs and now they are saving $55 million a year,” he told the Los Angeles Times.

When he accepted the deal, Allen said he regretted the cancellation of The Late Show. “I love Stephen Colbert. I’m a big fan,” Allen said. But once the network had made its decision, he saw no reason not to move ahead with his plans. “This isn’t show business, this is business show,” he said.

The Trump administration has made little effort to conceal its desire to influence television programming and sideline hosts it dislikes. That was evident in the case of Jimmy Kimmel after remarks he made about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and a close Trump ally, was unusually blunt. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” he said on a podcast.

A few days later, ABC announced that it was canceling Kimmel’s show, but reversed course after a wave of backlash. “Our government cannot be allowed to control what we do and do not say on television,” the comedian said in his first show after the controversy.

Colbert was not so lucky. He dared to criticize the $16 million settlement that Paramount, CBS’s parent company, agreed to pay Trump in exchange for dropping a lawsuit over what he claimed was an unfairly edited interview with Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate in the 2024 election. The lawsuit was widely seen as unlikely to succeed, but Paramount was reluctant to antagonize the administration while seeking approval for its merger with Skydance. On air, Colbert remarked that the “technical name” for the agreement was “a big fat bribe.” Days later, CBS announced that the show would end. Its final episode aired on May 21.

“All of these changes stem from an administration characterized by the concentration of power in the executive branch, the silencing of dissenting voices and a disregard for satire, a form of expression protected by the Constitution,” says Professor Young, who is also the author of Wrong: How Media, Politics, and Identity Drive Our Appetite for Misinformation.

David Letterman, the legendary host of The Late Show from 1993 until he handed the reins to Colbert in 2015, expressed what many believe about both the cancellation of the program and its replacement by Comics Unleashed. Of the cancellation, he called it “pure cowardice.” As for the new show, he said: “They don’t want to spend any money, so they’re going to make money. They charge Byron Allen some reasonable price. He sells all the advertising for his Comics Unleashed and it’ll be, I think, 90 minutes or two hours of comics talking about funny stuff.”

Hours before Colbert’s final show was taped at Manhattan’s Ed Sullivan Theater on May 21, a line of fans stretched for several blocks. Many had traveled from other cities to pay a final tribute to their idol. And they seemed to agree on one thing: it was a bad day for both U.S. television and the United States.

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