That position ignores the extraordinary level of mistrust between the Kim regime and the U.S., say current and former diplomats who have dealt with Pyongyang. Consider what the North means when it talks about denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula. Yes, it wants the South removed from the U.S. nuclear umbrella—the air and seaborne weapons standing ready to defend Seoul and other East Asian allies—but its sights go much further. U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials have learned to their chagrin that the North Korean government apparently believes—incorrectly—that the U.S. still maintains a secret stash of nuclear weapons in the South. In a December 20 statement, Pyongyang said the U.S. “must study geography.” The Korean Peninsula, it said, “includes the territory of our republic and also the entire region of South Korea where the United States has placed its invasive force, including nuclear weapons.”

The U.S. removed all tactical nukes from the South in the early 1990s, but the North’s claim is in line with domestic propaganda the North uses to demonize the U.S. Pyongyang claims America started the Korean War in 1950 by invading the North; in fact, Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Un’s grandfather, invaded the South. It says the U.S. seeks to keep Korea permanently divided and stands poised to attack the North at any moment. The standard assumption among many foreign policy analysts is that the leadership simply uses these claims to justify its own spending on the military in the face of widespread poverty.

But that doesn’t mean that in private discussions with outsiders—including U.S. or South Korean diplomats—the North simply waves away the outlandish claims as useful propaganda. Far from it. As Kim Sung-hak, a South Korean scholar who has extensively studied North Korean propaganda, puts it, “they tend to believe what they say publicly. It’s in the fabric of their DNA.”