North Korea’s launch last week of a missile from a naval destroyer elicited an uncharacteristically prosaic analysis from the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un.
The launch was proof that arming ships with nuclear weapons was “making satisfactory progress,” he said.
However, the test, and Kim’s mildly upbeat appraisal, were designed to reverberate well beyond the deck of the 5,000-tonne destroyer-class vessel the Choe Hyon — the biggest warship in the North Korean fleet.
Photo: AP
His pointed reference to nuclear weapons was made as the US and Israel continued their air bombardment of Iran — a regime US President Donald Trump had warned, without offering evidence, was only weeks away from having a nuclear weapon.
The widening war in the Middle East — and the existential threat to the Iranian regime — has likely reinforced North Korea’s decision to build a nuclear arsenal. For Kim and the dynasty that has ruled North Korea since it was founded by his grandfather in 1948, the nuclear program is about nothing less than regime survival.
“Kim must have thought Iran was attacked like that because it didn’t have nuclear weapons,” Song Seong-jong, a professor at Daejeon University and a former official at the South Korean Ministry of National Defense, said after the Middle East conflict erupted.
North Korea is several years into a nuclear weapons program that has gathered momentum despite UN sanctions and Trump’s attempts to use diplomacy to rid the Korean Peninsula of nuclear weapons.
The North conducted its first nuclear test in 2006 and its most recent in 2017, although doubts persist over the size of Pyongyang’s arsenal and its ability to marry a miniaturized nuclear warhead with a long-range missile theoretically capable of striking the US mainland.
A report last year by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said the North has assembled about 50 warheads and possesses enough fissile material to produce up to 40 more.
What is certain is Kim’s decision to make nuclear deterrence a priority — and forging a loose alliance with Russia and China — has guaranteed that he would avoid the fate of the former leaders of Iraq and Libya, and now Venezuela and Iran.
The North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ response to the war in Iran has been nuanced. It condemned the US and Israeli airstrikes last weekend as an “illegal act of aggression” that exposed Washington’s “hegemonic and rogue” instincts, but stopped short of condemning Trump by name.
That leaves the door open to a potential resumption of nuclear talks, contingent on Washington dropping its demand that Pyongyang abandon its nuclear weapons and accepting it as a legitimate nuclear state.
“If the United States withdraws its policy of confrontation with North Korea by respecting our country’s current status … there is no reason why we cannot get along well with the US,” the Korean Central News Agency quoted Kim as saying at a ruling party congress last month.
What is less clear in the minds of analysts is whether the Iran war opens up a new opportunity for talks or pushes the North Korean regime to be more inward looking.
Sydney Seiler, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, believes the conflict has made a nuclear deal between Washington and Pyongyang less likely.
“President Trump’s willingness to use military force and threats for negotiating leverage must make Kim nervous and less likely to hastily seek talks,” said Seiler, a former US special envoy who worked on the six-party talks on the North’s nuclear program.
However, other analysts said Kim’s desire to secure the regime’s long-term survival — and his rumored personal rapport with the US president — could draw him back to the negotiating table.
“Unlike Iran, it’s impossible to denuclearize North Korea,” said Cho Han-bum, of the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification, citing the presence of nuclear sites across the isolated country.
Going into those talks as head of a state with a nuclear deterrence could give Kim the latitude to win concessions from Trump, including security guarantees.
Trump has repeatedly said he would be open to meeting Kim, prompting speculation the two could hold talks when Trump visits China at the end of the month.
If those talks materialize, Kim knows he would be negotiating from a position of strength. As the Iranian leadership is finding to its cost, nuclear possession — not ambition — appears to be the path to security.
Additional reporting by Agencies
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
RSS