The North Korea's nuclear challenge is the pending issue in 2010 that must work out at the earliest date in Northeast Asia as it threatens regional peace and security seriously. North Korea (NK) has developed nuclear weapons clandestinely in Yongbyon nuclear complex. Pyongbuk province, for a long period. Since disclosure of NK's nuclear site and program in the early 1980s by French & US satellites. NK has played both 'hide and seek' and 'tug of war' games against the US efforts to end NK's nuclear progress over 30 years and more. The US centered on nuclear nonproliferation that is a core of its grand strategy has made every effort to deter NK's nuclear challenge by any means, while NK has acquired food and energy from the international community through a series of so-called brinkmanship diplomacy. As NK accelerated its nuclear development, the US made joint reaction with other competent nations in the Northeast Asian region against it through the Six Party talks.
The US prefer to solve the NK's nuclear problem within the framework of the Six Party talks, but NK unveiled its intention to take advantage of the nuclear issue as a means for NK-US direct talks. Claiming that NK has no particular reason to retain nuclear arsenal if the US government promises regime assurance toward NK, NK demands to establish peace mechanism on the Korean peninsula as a precondition. When it comes to NK's request for peace mechanism, the US tries to take the corresponding measures taking into account NK's will to abandon its nuclear program and its visible and verifiable compliance with the Joint Communique agreed.
Now both NK and the US confronts each other in security policy. NK has determined will to possess nuclear weapons for the sake of maintaining national identity and solidarity in the course of three-generation heredity, while the US is surely about to prevent NK from nuclear armament as a part of world strategy, i.e., nuclear nonproliferation. Under these circumstances, more complicated and unpredictable dynamism is being raised in the Northeast Asian region along with the matter of interests of neighboring countries seeking for their own profit and expansion of influence through NK's nuclear challenge. In this paper, we investigate Northeast Asian strategy of the six nations such as ROK, DPRK, US, Japan, China and Russia. More specifically we make in-depth study on how & why NK has launched and developed its nuclear weapons program and how other countries including the US have responded to the NK's nuclear question thereafter.