Despite the numerous sanctions imposed on North Korea, it seems unlikely that the hermit nation will give up its nuclear weapons. Just a few days ago, Pyongyang claimed it had successfully tested a Hydrogen Bomb. Has any country ever relinquished its nuclear arsenal?
The ones that gave it up
Only four countries have surrendered their nuclear weapons. Of them, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine inherited nukes after the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991. Later, they were not in a position to maintain the weapons and gave them up to Russia
South Africa builds and bans
Only one country, apartheid South Africa, built nuclear weapons and then surrendered them. In the 1970s, the white rulers feared the USSR was plotting with local black and communist groups to gain control of South Africa, writes Greg Myre in NPR. But soon the Soviet threat became weaker and the Cold War was over. In 1990, the then President F W de Klerk released Mandela from prison and around the same time decided to scrap the nuclear programme
Apartheid regime’s attempt at acceptance
When De Klerk became the energy minister in 1980s, he learnt about South Africa’s covert nuclear program. But he “never felt comfortable with it” but “couldn’t stop it,” de Klerk told The Atlantic’s Uri Friedman. The country’s last white president also wanted to end the nation’s pariah status due to apartheid. One way to “achieve re-acceptance in the international community would have been to take (the) initiative, without any pressure from outside, to bring the program to an end,” he told Friedman