When Obama entered office in January 2009 and offered to “extend a hand” to Bush’s rogue states, optimists hoped for the negotiated denuclearization of North Korea. Sadly, North Korea has betrayed the US at least three times since then: it conducted a second nuclear test in May 2009; launched a satellite in April 2012 in defiance of UN Security Council Resolutions 1718 and 1874; and carried out a third nuclear test in February 2013.