China, North Korea, and Nuclear Arms

An Interactive Timeline

As tensions again escalate on the Korean Peninsula, ChinaFile examines more than a decade of developments in North Korea’s nuclear armaments program.

We begin our timeline in late 2002, when China first joined diplomatic discussions, paving the way for what would become known as the “Six-Party Talks” on denuclearizing North Korea—talks that for the first time included diplomats from both North and South Korea, China, Russia, Japan, and the United States.

Fully-searchable, the timeline links each development to news headlines from the day and is sortable by country.

When viewing the timeline, click on “More” to learn more about a particular event. Use your left and right keyboard arrow keys to move through timeline events. See a full-browser version of the map here.