In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, visits a special operation forces unit at a western district in North Korea on October 2, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threatened to use nuclear weapons and destroy South Korea permanently if provoked, state media reported Friday (October 4, 2024), after the South’s leader warned that Mr. Kim’s regime would collapse if he attempted to use nuclear arms.

The exchange of such rhetoric between the rival Koreas is nothing new, but the latest comments come during heightened animosities over the North’s recent disclosure of a nuclear facility and its continuation of missile tests. Next week, observers say North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament is expected to constitutionally declare a hostile “two-state” system on the Korean Peninsula to formally reject reconciliation with South Korea and codify new national borders.

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During a visit to a special operation forces unit on Wednesday (October 2, 2024), Mr. Kim said his military “would use without hesitation all the offensive forces it possesses, including nuclear weapons,” if South Korea attempts to use armed forces encroaching upon the sovereignty of North Korea, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

“If such a situation comes, the permanent existence of Seoul and the Republic of Korea would be impossible,” Mr. Kim said, using South Korea’s official name.

Mr. Kim’s statement was a response to South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s speech at his country’s Armed Forces Day on Tuesday (October 1, 2024). Unveiling South Korea’s most powerful Hyunmoo-5 ballistic missile and other conventional weapons that could target North Korea, Mr. Yoon said the day that North Korea tries to use nuclear weapons would be the end of the Kim government because Kim would face “the resolute and overwhelming response” of the South Korean-U.S. alliance.

Mr. Kim responded that Yoon’s address fully betrayed his “bellicose temerity” and showed “the security uneasiness and irritating psychology of the puppet forces.”

In a derisive comment, Mr. Kim called Mr. Yoon “an abnormal man,” saying that “the puppet Yoon bragged about an overwhelming counteraction of military muscle at the doorstep of a state that possesses nuclear weapons.” On Thursday, Kim’s sister and senior official, Kim Yo Jong, also ridiculed South Korea’s showcasing of the Hyunmoo-5 missile, saying there there’s no way for South Korea to counter the North Korea’s nuclear forces with conventional weapons.

Since adopting an escalatory nuclear doctrine in 2022, Mr. Kim has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons preemptively. But many foreign experts say it’s still unlikely that he would use his nuclear arms first because his military is outmatched by the U.S. and its allied forces. In July, South Korea and the U.S. signed a defense guideline on integrating South Korea’s conventional capabilities with the U.S. nuclear forces to better deal with North Korea’s advancing nuclear program. South Korea has no nuclear weapons.

Animosities between the Koreas are at the worst point in years with Mr. Kim’s provocative run of missile tests and the South Korean-U.S. military exercises intensifying in a cycle of tit-for-tat. All communication channels and exchange programs between the rivals remain stalled since 2019, when a broader U.S.-North Korea diplomacy on ending the North’s nuclear program collapsed.

In January, Mr. Kim called for rewriting North Korea’s constitution to eliminate the idea of a peaceful unification between the war-divided countries and to cement the South as an “invariable principal enemy.”

He also reiterated that his country does not recognize the Northern Limit Line, a western sea boundary that was drawn by the U.S.-led U.N. Command at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. He called for the new constitution to include a clear definition of the North’s territories. North Korea has traditionally insisted upon a boundary that encroaches deeply into waters currently controlled by South Korea.

On Friday, South Korea’s military said North Korea was again flying balloons likely carrying trash across the border into South Korea. Since late May, North Korea has launched thousands of rubbish-carrying balloons toward South Korea, prompting South Korea to resume anti-Pyongyang propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts at border areas.

A TV screen shows an image of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a news programme at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, on September 13, 2024. The letters read, “North Korea, unveiling the uranium enrichment facility for the first time,” and “the construction site for expanding the capacity for the production of nuclear weapons.”
| Photo Credit: AP

North Korea offered a rare glimpse into a secretive facility to produce weapons-grade uranium as state media reported on Friday (September 13, 2024) that leader Kim Jong Un visited the area and called for stronger efforts to “exponentially” increase the number of his nuclear weapons.

It’s unclear if the site is at the North’s main Yongbyon nuclear complex, but it’s the North’s first disclosure of a uranium-enrichment facility since it showed one at Yongbyon to visiting American scholars in 2010.

While the latest unveiling is likely an attempt to apply more pressure on the U.S. and its allies, the images North Korea’s media released of the area could provide outsiders with a valuable source of information for estimating the amount of nuclear ingredients that North Korea has produced.

During a visit to the Nuclear Weapons Institute and the production base of weapon-grade nuclear materials, Mr. Kim expressed “great satisfaction repeatedly over the wonderful technical force of the nuclear power field” held by North Korea, the official Korean Central News Agency(KCNA) reported.

KCNA said Mr. Kim went around the control room of the uranium enrichment base and a construction site that would expand its capacity for producing nuclear weapons. North Korean state media photos showed Mr. Kim being briefed by scientists while walking along long lines of tall gray tubes, but KCNA didn’t say when Mr. Kim visited the facilities and where they are located.

KCNA said Mr. Kim stressed the need to further augment the number of centrifuges to “exponentially increase the nuclear weapons for self-defense,” a goal he has repeatedly stated in recent years. It said Mr. Kim ordered officials to push forward the introduction of a new-type centrifuge, which has reached its completion stage.

Mr. Kim said North Korea needs greater defence and preemptive attack capabilities because “anti-(North Korea) nuclear threats perpetrated by the U.S. imperialists-led vassal forces have become more undisguised and crossed the red-line,” KCNA said.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry said it strongly condemned North Korea’s unveiling of a uranium-enrichment facility and Mr. Kim’s vows to boost his country’s nuclear capability. A Ministry statement said North Korea’s “illegal” pursuit of nuclear weapons in defiance of U.N. bans is a serious threat to international peace. It said North Korea must realise it cannot win anything with its nuclear programme.

North Korea first showed a uranium enrichment site in Yongbyon to the outside world in November 2010, when it allowed a visiting delegation of Stanford University scholars led by nuclear physicist, Siegfried Hecker, to tour its centrifuges. North Korean officials then reportedly told Hecker that 2,000 centrifuges were already installed and running at Yongbyon.

Satellite images in recent years have indicated North Korea was expanding a uranium enrichment plant at its Yongbyon nuclear complex. Nuclear weapons can be built using either highly enriched uranium or plutonium and North Korea has facilities to produce both at Yongbyon. It’s not clear exactly how much weapons-grade plutonium or highly enriched uranium has been produced at Yongbyon and where North Korea stores it.

“For analysts outside the country, the released images will provide a valuable source of information for rectifying our assumptions about how much material North Korea may have amassed to date,” said Ankit Panda, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“Overall, we should not assume that North Korea will be as constrained as it once was by fissile material limitations. This is especially true for highly enriched uranium, where North Korea is significantly less constrained in its ability to scale up than it is with plutonium,” Mr. Panda said.

In 2018, Hecker and Stanford University scholars estimated North Korea’s highly enriched uranium inventory was 250 to 500 kg (550 to 1,100 pounds), sufficient for 25 to 30 nuclear devices.

The North Korean photos released on Friday showed about 1,000 centrifuges. When operated year-round, they would be able to produce around 20 to 25 kg (44 to 55 pounds) of highly enriched uranium, which would be enough to create a single bomb, according to Yang UK, a security expert at Seoul’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies.

The new-type centrifuge Mr. Kim wants to introduce is likely an advanced carbon fiber-based one that could allow North Korea to produce five to 10 times more highly enriched uranium than its existing ones, said Lee Choon Geun, an honorary research fellow at South Korea’s Science and Technology Policy Institute.

Some U.S. and South Korean experts speculate North Korea is covertly running at least one other uranium-enrichment plant. In 2018, a top South Korean official told Parliament that North Korea was estimated to have already manufactured up to 60 nuclear weapons. Estimates on how many nuclear bombs North Korea can add every year vary, ranging from six to as much as 18.