In comments posted on Saturday, Kim said North Korea is moving forward with armaments to deter the United States, comments that seem to show President Donald Trump’s strategy of high-level engagement with Pyongyang – including three historic personal encounters between Trump and Kim – failed to convince Pyongyang to stop his search for a modern nuclear arsenal.
“No matter who is in power in the United States, the true nature and spirit of anti-North Korea policy will never change,” said Kim, according to the Central News Agency of Korea (KCNA).
“The development of nuclear weapons must be carried out without interruption.”
The projects, according to Kim, are in various stages of development. He said that “multi-warhead guidance technology” is in the final stage, while studies on hypersonic flight that could be applied to new ballistic missiles “are complete”, with North Korea “making preparations for their testing and production” – a possible sign that Pyongyang may be about to resume the missile test anathema type for Washington and Seoul.
Improvements to tactical nuclear weapons – which are expected to be used at a shorter range and are often less destructive than strategic nuclear weapons – are also being finalized, said Kim. The search for nuclear powered submarines appears to be the least advanced. The research on these submarines is complete and in “final stages of examination,” said Kim.
Experts say the Kim regime has long sought these technologies to improve the quality and durability of its nuclear weapons. A nuclear powered submarine would be particularly useful from the standpoint of deterrence because it would increase North Korea’s “second attack” capability – the ability to survive an opponent’s initial nuclear attack and respond in kind.
“I wouldn’t expect even a prototype of a nuclear nuclear reactor in North Korea, but his interest in the technology is not surprising,” said Ankit Panda, senior researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert on North Korea’s nuclear program.
Panda said Kim’s interest in tactical or low-yielding nuclear weapons makes sense, although they can be “very inefficient in the use of fissile material”, which is not easy for North Korea to obtain.
“North Korea’s interest in these weapons is not surprising from a strategic point of view – in fact, it greatly enhances Kim’s preferred nuclear strategy,” said Panda, author of “Kim Jong Un and the bomb: survival and deterrence in North Korea. ”
Panda said that North Korea probably wants these tactical nuclear weapons to combat a potential conventional domestic invasion. In this way, Kim could maintain his long-range strategic nuclear weapons “for retaliation against the United States and civilian centers in Japan and South Korea if the United States and its allies continue after initial nuclear use”.
“Kim’s interest in tactical nuclear weapons is very similar to that of Pakistan: use them early to degrade the mobilization of a conventionally superior neighbor,” he said.
Kim’s comments were delivered to the country’s top political leaders, who are meeting in Pyongyang for the Workers Party’s Eighth Congress – a high-level meeting where the country’s rulers come together to reflect on the successes and failures of previous years and set an agenda for the future. These meetings are usually held every five years or more, but Kim’s father and predecessor – Kim Jong Il – stopped holding them after 1980. Kim Jong Un revived them in 2016.
North Korea’s fledgling economy is probably the most important topic on the domestic agenda. Kim admitted in August that his economic plans drawn up in the Seventh Workers’ Party had failed and promised to do better. However, sanctions, natural disasters and the Covid-19 pandemic have driven the North Korean economy into a free fall, and experts are not sure how things can get better without major reforms.
Kim’s plans to develop his nuclear arsenal and modernize his conventional arsenal covered most of the address. He promised that North Korea would be a responsible nuclear power, committed to a “policy to ban the first use of nuclear weapons.
“As a responsible nuclear power, North Korea will not abuse nuclear weapons unless hostile invasive forces try to use it against it,” said Kim.
Although Kim said that the continued increase in nuclear and conventional weapons does not “exclude diplomacy”, he warned opponents against any “attempts to violate the country’s highest interests and dignity”.
The comments directed at the United States are Kim’s first publicly addressed to President-elect Joe Biden, and indicate that Pyongyang may not be eager to engage in negotiations in the early days of the new government.
Kim said the key to establishing a new North Korea-United States relationship requires the United States to end its “hostility policy” towards Pyongyang, which North Korea often defines as Washington’s alliance with South Korea. , its commitment to protect South Korea under the US “nuclear umbrella” and deployments of US forces in East Asia.
Biden, however, made it clear that his foreign policy strategy will involve strengthening ties with allies who felt abandoned by Trump, who saw the partnerships as transactional in nature.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry said Seoul would not change its policies on denuclearization or inter-Korean peace in response to Kim’s comments.
“South Korea hopes that negotiations between North Korea and the United States will resume as soon as possible, with the start of a new government,” the ministry said in a statement.
But the Biden government may be forced to deal with it sooner than it would like, as North Korea conducted provocative missile tests during the first 100 days of the Trump and Obama governments.