There is a growing debate in both Washington and Seoul that arms control may be the only remaining option in dealing with North Korea’s nukes. In review of the debate, this article makes two central arguments. First, arms control is more likely to become the US’s ‘third approach’ to North Korea’s nukes. As this study finds, there are intriguing resem-blances between today’s arms control debate on North Korea and the ‘classical arms con-trol’ theories that emerged when US-Soviet Union’s ‘uncontrolled’ nuclear rivalry was rapidly picking up in the 1950s and 1960s. Although historical and theoretical parallels can be porous, emerging new multipolar nuclear race with Russia, China, and new nuclear powers including North Korea is morphing US’s arms control paradigm back to the three priorities of classical arms control - deterrence, escalation control, and crisis management - that trumped all other concerns including nonproliferation/denuclearization. Second, while such shift may be inevitable, this study argues that there are more perils than solu-tions in seeking arms control approach to North Korea. Also, unlike arms control propo-nents, this article challenges the assumption that arms control has not been tried with North Korea.