The Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, said on Thursday that the world must recognize North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons and engage in dialogue despite the country’s violations of sanctions and international law.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Grossi questioned whether closing diplomatic engagement with North Korea has yielded results and urged the international community to restart dialogue with the country, but acknowledged that the country should be condemned for violating Security Council Resolutions and sanctions. Grossi also argued that it is important to reiterate to the North Koreans to stop its nuclear activities.

North Korea withdrew itself from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1993 and withdrew its membership from the IAEA in 1994. The country tested its first nuclear weapon on October 9th, 2006, and from then has quickly become one of the most sanctioned, diplomatically closed-off countries in the world.

In 2018, U.S. President Trump and Kim Jong Un shocked the world by holding a face-to-face summit in Singapore, which was followed by the 2019 Hanoi summit where both leaders failed to reach a compromise on sanctions and North Korean denuclearization. The Hanoi Summit was the last time leaders of both countries engaged in high-level diplomatic dialogue.

In April 2023, North Korea revealed its first solid-fuel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, the Hwasong-18, which has a potential range of 9320 miles and could target anywhere in the continental United States. During a year-end plenary meeting of the Korean Workers Party’s Central Committee, Kim Jong Un declared his government’s intention to abandon Korean reunification, calling South Korea the “enemy” of North Korea and arguing reunification would be “impossible.”

In this current environment, Grossi said, engaging with North Korea would require “very careful, diplomatic preparatory moves” to regain trust. Grossi argued that one issue to be engaged in with Pyongyang could be nuclear security. On September 13, Pyongyang offered a first glimpse of its uranium enrichment facility which produces materials for the country’s nuclear weapons.

Grossi said the IAEA’s analysis of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is “very solid.”

“As these pictures show, and beyond that, they have a vast nuclear program, which is perhaps the only one in the world on which there is no visibility in terms of the observance of the basic international nuclear safety standards,” Grossi said.

In late December 2022, Kim Jong Un argued for the further expansion of the nuclear arsenal and to “exponentially” produce more nuclear weapons.

North Korea has recently forged close diplomatic and military ties with Russia ever since the latter invaded Ukraine in 2022, with Putin and Kim Jong Un having visited both respective countries. North Korean-made missiles have also been seen deployed against Ukrainian targets.

“In these conditions, the very term of ‘denuclearization’ as applied to North Korea has lost all meaning. For us, this is a closed issue,” Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister said on Thursday. Lavrov said that Moscow understood Pyongyang’s logic of relying on nuclear weapons as the foundation of its defense strategy.