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![handle is hein.crs/govehaf0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Con gressionaI flew rch Service
Informing the legislitive debate since 1914
Updated April 8, 2022
North Korea's Nuclear Weapons and Missile Programs
Overview
North Korea continues to advance its nuclear weapons and
missile programs despite UN Security Council sanctions
and high-level diplomatic efforts. Recent ballistic missile
tests and military parades suggest that North Korea is
continuing to build a 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.
According to the U.S. intelligence community's 2022
annual threat assessment, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un
views nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic
missiles (ICBMs) as the ultimate guarantor of his
totalitarian and autocratic rule of North Korea and believes
that over time he will gain international acceptance as a
nuclear power. At the January 2021 North Korean
Workers' Party Conference, Kim hailed the status of our
state as a nuclear weapons state and praised its powerful
and reliable strategic deterrent. Kim Jong-un has said 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.
Nuclear Testing
North Korea has tested a nuclear explosive device six times
since 2006. Each test produced underground blasts
progressively higher in magnitude and estimated yield.
North Korea conducted its most recent test on September 3,
2017. A North Korean press release stated it had tested a
hydrogen bomb (or two-stage thermonuclear warhead) that
it was perfecting for delivery on an intercontinental ballistic
missile.
In April 2018, North Korea announced that it had achieved
its goals, 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 an October 2018 meeting with
then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Kim Jong-un
invited inspectors to visit the [test site] to confirm that it
has been irreversibly dismantled, but this did not occur. In
March 2022, press reports said South Korean government
sources, as well as open source analysts, had observed steps
to restore the test site.
Nuclear Material Production
North Korea reportedly 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 centrifuge uranium enrichment
plants at the Yongbyon nuclear complex and possibly at
Kangson. A March 2022 International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) report says that there were no indications
of operations at its Radiochemical Laboratory
(reprocessing) plant since July 2021, but there was ongoing
operation of the Yongbyon Experimental Light Water
5MW(e) Reactor. Spent fuel from this reactor has been
reprocessed in the past to extract plutonium for weapons.
The IAEA also observed activities at the Kangson complex
and the Pyongsan uranium mine and concentration plant.
Nuclear Warheads
Fissile material production in large part determines the
number and type of nuclear warheads North Korea is able
to build. The 2021 DIA report says that North Korea
retains a stockpile of nuclear weapons. Outside experts
estimate that North Korea has produced enough fissile
material for between 20 to 60 warheads. Another goal of a
nuclear weapons program is to lower the size and weight of
nuclear warhead for deployment on missiles. In 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). Kim Jong-un in January 2021 said that the country
was able to miniaturize, lighten and standardize nuclear
weapons and to make them tactical ones.
Missile Development
U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolutions prohibit North
Korea's 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. Ballistic missiles can deliver nuclear
and large conventional payloads at high speed and over
great distances. They are categorized as short-range,
medium-range, or long-range (intercontinental) based on
the distance from the launch site to the target.
North Korea is developing nuclear weapons and delivery
systems that possess certain critical features: mobility,
reliability, potency, precision, and survivability. Mobile
weapons have increased survivability compared with fixed
launch sites and static stockpiles. Reliability, potency,
precision, and in-flight maneuverability work together to
maximize the impact of North Korea's limited quantity of
weapons, launchers, and warheads. A key element to North
Korean missile doctrine, therefore, is continued testing to
develop, ensure, and demonstrate these features.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.crs/govehaf0001&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)