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Updated July 14, 2020
North Korea's Nuclear Weapons and Missile Programs
North Korea continues to advance its nuclear weapons and
missile programs despite high-level diplomatic efforts and
UN Security Council sanctions. In April 2018, North
Korean leader Kim Jong Un said that nuclear and long-
range missile testing was no longer necessary because the
country had achieved its objectives. However, in the past
two years, North Korea has increased the testing pace for its
ballistic missile and submarine-launched systems. In late
December 2019, Kim announced that, due to the United
States' policies, there is no ground for North Korea to
continue to maintain its testing moratoria.
Recent missile tests suggest that North Korea is striving to
build a credible nuclear warfighting capability designed to
evade regional ballistic missile defenses. Such an approach
likely reinforces a deterrence and coercive diplomacy
strategy lending more credibility as it demonstrates
capability but it also raises questions about crisis stability
and escalation control. Congress may choose to examine
U.S. policy in light of these advances.
North Korean statements describe North Korea's nuclear
arsenal as a deterrent to U.S. nuclear war threats. Kim
Jong Un said at the 2016 Workers' Party Congress that
nuclear weapons of the DPRK can be used only by a final
order of the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's
Army [Kim Jong Un] to repel invasion or attack from a
hostile nuclear weapons state and make retaliatory strikes.
The U.S. intelligence community has said North Korean
leaders view nuclear weapons as critical to regime
survival and intended for deterrence, international
prestige, and coercive diplomacy.
In the April 2018 Panmunjom Declaration by North and
South Korea and the June 2018 U.S.-North Korea Joint
Statement, Kim Jong Un pledged to improve relations and
work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean
Peninsula. However, the Director of National Intelligence
(DNI) said in his 2019 threat assessment to Congress that
North Korea is unlikely to give up all of its nuclear
weapons and production capabilities, even as it seeks to
negotiate partial denuclearization steps to obtain key US
and international concessions.
On September 3, 2017, North Korea announced it had
tested a hydrogen bomb (or two-stage thermonuclear
warhead) that it said it was perfecting for delivery on an
intercontinental ballistic missile. North Korea has tested a
nuclear explosive device six times since 2006. Each test
produced underground blasts progressively higher in
magnitude and estimated yield. In April 2018, North Korea
announced that it had achieved its goals and would no
longer conduct nuclear tests, and would close down its
Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Site. It dynamited the entrances to
two test tunnels in May 2018 prior to the first Trump-Kim
summit in front of a group of journalists. In an October
2018 meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Kim
Jong Un invited inspectors to visit the Punggye-ri nuclear
test site to confirm that it has been irreversibly dismantled,
but this has not yet occurred.
North Korea continues to produce fissile material
(plutonium and highly enriched uranium) for weapons.
North Korea restarted its plutonium production facilities
after it withdrew from a nuclear agreement in 2009, and is
operating at least one centrifuge enrichment plant at its
Yongbyon nuclear complex. During the September 2018
North-South Korea Pyongyang Summit, the North stated it
would permanently disable the Yongbyon facilities if the
United States took corresponding measures. U.S. officials
have said that other clandestine enrichment facilities likely
exist. Open-source reports, citing U.S. government sources,
identified one such site at Kangson. News reports in August
2017 said that one component of the intelligence
community (IC), the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency
(DIA), estimated a stockpile of up to 60 nuclear warheads.
Some experts have estimated that North Korea could
produce enough nuclear material for an additional seven
warheads per year.
According to the U.S. IC, North Korea aims to develop a
nuclear warhead that is miniaturized, or sufficiently
lightweight and small enough to mount on a long-range
ballistic missile. As of July 2017, a DIA assessment and
some outside observers believed North Korea had achieved
the level of miniaturization required to fit a nuclear device
on weapons ranging across the spectrum of its missiles,
from short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) to
intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM).
Dfvery Velhick*
Recognizing the danger to international peace and security
posed by North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons, U.N.
Security Council (UNSC) resolutions prohibit development
of the means of delivering conventional and nuclear
payloads, in addition to the nuclear weapons themselves.
UNSC resolutions ban all ballistic missile tests by North
Korea. A ballistic missile is a projectile powered by a
rocket engine until it reaches the apogee of its trajectory, at
which point it falls back to earth using earth's gravity.
Projectiles are categorized as short-range, medium-range, or
intercontinental based on the distance from the launch site
they can strike a target. Ballistic missiles can deliver
nuclear and large conventional payloads at high speed and
over great distances.
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