North Korea international profile

Professor at the University of North Korean Studies

28 Sep 2023 3 2

Leif-Eric Easley

Inserted 1 year ago

“The days of North Korea disguising ICBM activity as satellite launches were long-gone. Kim's blatant violations of UN Security Council resolutions showed that his goal was to make North Korea a full-fledged nuclear power and demand concessions from other countries.”

Professor at Ewha University in Seoul

14 Apr 2023 2 4

Kim Jong-un

Inserted 1 year ago

“We should never be satisfied with the work to consolidate the thoroughgoing response posture of our nuclear force and should continuously strive to strengthen nuclear force steadily.”

Leader of North Korea

28 Mar 2023 0 2

Andrei Lankov

Inserted 1 year ago

“You have to keep in mind that if they only care about defending themselves, they don't need tactical nukes. Their existing nuclear forces are sufficiently large to provide absolutely reliable deterrence, so what they are doing now is for offensive operations - for attack. Not now. Maybe many decades later, maybe never. But they have passed the defensive stage and they are actually now getting weapons whose only conceivable task is to be used as tools for aggression.”

Professor at Seoul's Kookmin University

20 Feb 2023 1 3

Leif-Eric Easley

Inserted 1 year ago

“Such parades largely serve to justify Kim's policies to a domestic political audience. The regime has staked its legitimacy on nuclear weapons at the expense of diplomacy and the economy. The message Pyongyang wants to send internationally, demonstrating its capabilities to deter and coerce, will likely come in the form of solid-fuel missile tests and detonation of a miniaturised nuclear device.”

Professor at Ewha University in Seoul

09 Feb 2023 3 3

Harry Harris

Inserted 1 year ago

“The U.S. intelligence community assesses that KJU [Kim Jong-un] views nuclear weapons as the ultimate deterrent against foreign intervention. KJU declared last year that he would be willing to employ nukes more broadly in wartime, and last September, he stated unequivocally that he would never give up his nukes and the North Korea's status as a nuclear weapons state is irreversible. We must not relax sanctions or reduce joint military exercises just to get North Korea to come to the negotiating table. This is a fool's error. While we hope for diplomacy with North Korea to be successful, we must recognize that hope alone is not a course of action. The quest for dialogue with the North must never be made at the expense of the ability to respond to threats from the North.”

Former United States Ambassador to South Korea

03 Jan 2023 2 4

Cheong Seong-chang

Inserted 1 year ago

“Compared with Kim's previous New Year's remarks, which highlighted the country's economic growth, he emphasized strengthening the military and nuclear weapons this time. A nuclear test is expected soon to back up his message. The prediction that North Korea would push ahead with a nuclear test before the midterms in the United States in November was wrong, perhaps because it ignored the North's politics. If the past is any guide, North Korea conducted nuclear tests on or just prior to politically meaningful days. If the North does not conduct a test in January or February, it could be delayed to July 27, the anniversary of the Korean War armistice signing, which is called 'the Day of Victory in the Great Fatherland Liberation War' in North Korea, or later.”

Director of the Center for North Korean Studies at the Sejong Institute

02 Jan 2023 2 3

Kim Jong-un

Inserted 1 year ago

“North Korea's ultimate goal is to possess the world's most powerful strategic force, the absolute force unprecedented in the century.”

Theguardian

Leader of North Korea

27 Nov 2022 0 2

Hong Min

Inserted 1 year ago

“It was unusual that the North announced that it was reacting to a 10-hour long artillery drill. It seems like the shelling was aimed at testing whether Seoul really thinks about breaking the military agreement. If the North dared to ignore the agreement, it can simply arm its soldiers in the Demilitarized Zone. Many South Korean politicians assume that the North is staging the military actions with some great purpose in mind, but there are fair chances that Pyongyang is just responding to Seoul's stance of enhancing extended deterrence with the U.S. If we look into the situation from North Korea's shoes, South Korea's new Yoon government abruptly started to mention extended deterrence. Then, it brought a U.S. aircraft carrier for naval drills, so the North also started to react. And now, South Korea is talking about deploying U.S. nuclear weapons or developing its own warheads. I'm not trying to justify the North's military actions, but it is questionable whether the current spiral of provocation-punishment is helpful in controlling the situation of the Korean Peninsula. The North has become confident about its weapon system. Unlike in the past, there will not be a breather if the two sides keep raising tensions.”

Senior researcher at the state-run Korea Institute for National Unification

15 Oct 2022 3 5

Go Myong-hyun

Inserted 1 year ago

“There seems to be no clear purpose for the recent actions. In the past, we used to say there is an equation that the North's provocations are aimed at greater leverage in talks. However, the recent moves are not the case. In the past, the North's strategy and goal was gaining U.S. recognition as a nuclear state and lifting the sanctions that are hampering its trade. However, North Korea is now assumed to have produced many nuclear weapons and there is less attractiveness in gaining such recognition. Rather, the recent moves are assumed to be aimed at gaining international attention for its seventh nuclear test with missile launches and other provocations, and showing its force to the world. Bragging about its nuclear forces seems to be the ultimate purpose of the recent moves.”

Research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies

15 Oct 2022 2 5

Leif-Eric Easley

Inserted 1 year ago

“North Korea's cruise missiles, air force, and tactical nuclear devices are probably much less capable than propaganda suggests. But it would be a mistake to dismiss North Korea's recent weapons testing spree as bluster or sabre-rattling. Pyongyang's military threats are a chronic and worsening problem for peace and stability in Asia that must not be ignored. Policymakers in Seoul, Tokyo and Washington should not allow domestic politics and other challenges such as Russia's war in Ukraine to prevent them from increasing international coordination on military deterrence and economic sanctions.”

Professor at Ewha University in Seoul

13 Oct 2022 4 4

Leif-Eric Easley

Inserted 1 year ago

“Pyongyang has been concerned about military exercises by the U.S., South Korea and Japan, so to strengthen its self-proclaimed deterrent, it is making explicit the nuclear threat behind its recent missile launches. The KCNA report may also be harbinger of a forthcoming nuclear test for the kind of tactical warhead that would arm the units Kim visited in the field.”

Professor at Ewha University in Seoul

10 Oct 2022 3 6

Harry Kazianis

Inserted 1 year ago

“The war in Ukraine means that North Korea will be able to test all sorts of weapons ― hypersonic missiles, submarine-launched systems, nuclear weapons and of course ICBMs ― and pay no penalty as Washington is distracted while Russia and China are unwilling to help. The Kim Jong-un regime will certainly test as much as they can during this unique time period, driving Washington and its allies to increase their own military capabilities. That means not only are we in for an arms race in Northeast Asia, but the stage is set for Japan and South Korea to actively consider developing and deploying their own nuclear weapons. We are far beyond a simple arms race at this point.”

Senior director of Korean Studies at the Center for the National Interest

06 Oct 2022 7 3

Kim Jong-un

Inserted 1 year ago

“Through unheard of sanctions and blockade(s) … they are trying to lead us but to give up the nuclear weapons of our own accord. But never! Let them impose sanctions for 100, nay 1000 days, or even 10 or 100 years.”

Leader of North Korea

08 Sep 2022 2 3

Zhao Tong

Inserted 1 year ago

“Beijing could have abstained, but it used the veto to publicly signal its growing disagreement with and resentment toward Washington. Everyone knew that the veto would send a wrong and dangerous message to North Korea, but Russia and China believe they face higher stakes in pushing back against their perceived hostility from the Western countries. Beijing and Moscow also genuinely see North Korea's nuclear and missile developments as driven by threats from Washington and cannot be fully blamed on Pyongyang. We have a perception gap problem among the major powers. North Korea is only exploiting and benefiting from it.”

Beijing-based security scholar af the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

27 May 2022 4 3

Artyom Lukin

Inserted 1 year ago

“It seemed like the United States wanted to provoke and produce this split in the Security Council, knowing that China and Russia would not support the resolution. Moscow and Beijing appear somewhat tolerant of North Korea's resuming long-range missile launches, but it is far from clear that Pyongyang has Russia's and China's consent, tacit or otherwise, for a nuclear test. Nuclear testing is seen by Beijing, and especially Moscow, as a far more serious matter, compared to missile testing. Nevertheless, Russia sees the Ukraine crisis as a proxy war with the United States, and the war is now bleeding into the situation around North Korea. Even though Moscow and Washington have a real shared interest in the denuclearisation of North Korea, it has now become extremely difficult, if not impossible, for them to collaborate.”

Associate professor with Russia’s Far Eastern Federal University

27 May 2022 6 8

Jenny Town

Inserted 1 year ago

“I think it was a big mistake for the U.S. to push for what was sure to fail rather than showing unified opposition to North Korea's actions. In the current political environment, the idea that China and Russia could agree with the U.S. on anything would have sent a strong signal to Pyongyang.”

Director of the U.S.-based 38 North programme, which monitors North Korea

27 May 2022 3 3

Jeffrey Prescott

Inserted 1 year ago

“Today's vote means North Korea will feel more free to take further escalatory actions. But we can't resign ourselves to this fate - that would be far too dangerous.”

Deputy to the United States Ambassador to the United Nations

26 May 2022 1 3

Kim Jong-un

Inserted 2 years ago

“The basic mission of our nuclear forces is to deter war, but if an undesirable situation emerges on our land, we should not limit our capability to a single purpose of preventing war. If any forces attempt to infringe on our fundamental interests, our nuclear forces will have no choice but to fulfill its second mission. The republic's (North Korea's) nuclear forces should be readied so that they can carry on their responsibility and exercise deterrence whenever required.”

Leader of North Korea

26 Apr 2022 3 3

Leif-Eric Easley

Inserted 2 years ago

“The Kim regime needs more sources of national pride and legitimacy than military parades. So the public commemorations around its founder's birthday tried to portray an economy that is not only resilient but growing, and a society that is not only united but also modern and happy. But this does not represent a shift away from North Korea's military build-up. Kim Jong-un's stated goal of deploying tactical nuclear weapons, Kim Yo-jong's recent threats toward Seoul, and satellite imagery of tunneling activity at Punggye-ri all point to an upcoming nuclear test. Additional missile launches are also expected for honing weapons delivery systems.”