North Korea threatens the unthinkable

The rogue state has not been on President Trump’s mind for some time.

“I have solved that problem,” he declared from the lawn of the White House in 2018. “Now, we’re getting it memorialised and all. But that problem is largely solved.”

Pyongyang paused its nuclear weapons program for about 12 months. But talks derailed in 2019, with North Korea’s restarted program going on to introduce far more capable weapons that can reach deep into the United States.

Now Kim wants more.

“The security environment around the DPRK is getting more serious day by day, and the prevailing situation requires us to make a radical and swift change in … rapid expansion of nuclearisation,” Kim reportedly told officials during the inspection of a new warship earlier this week.

He was referring to the 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield military exercise that has mobilised 21,000 troops (of which 18,000 are from South Korea) for simulated command network training and field operations.

Kim says the drills are rehearsals for invasion.

But North Korea’s own troops are gaining actual combat experience fighting alongside Russia in its attempted invasion of Ukraine.

And Pyongyang is getting access to Moscow’s nuclear warhead, ballistic missile and technical expertise in payment.

“This collaboration is, of course, an open secret, as the renewed alliance between the two countries has been in the media spotlight for a good two years already,” financial security analyst Wojciech Pawlus writes for the Royal United Services Institute.

“Russia sacrificed what little political credibility it still had as an international player to obtain men and material to sustain its war effort in Ukraine. North Korea, on the other hand, has now entered a binding relationship with a rogue and willing partner, providing desperately needed technology, commodities and most importantly, cash, to sustain Pyongyang’s status as a nuclear power.”

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Nuclear expansion

Kim was touring his nation’s first modern destroyer at the Nampo shipyards when he revived his nuclear threats. Named Choe Hyon (after a North Korean general), the 5000-tonne destroyer was first unveiled in April. A second ship of the type capsized as it was launched in May. A third is under construction.

The North Korean dictator visited Russia’s Vladivostok naval base in 2019. This prompted him to build a new naval shipyard and begin producing his own advanced warships.

Six years later, and with considerable Russian help, Kim’s new warships are being fitted with vertical missile launch systems capable of carrying nuclear-tipped warheads.

“North Korea’s naval modernisation program doesn’t make military sense,” Boston College political scientist Khang Vu writes for the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter publication.

“Nuclear-tipped missiles, nuclear-powered submarines, and long-range artillery allow Pyongyang to credibly threaten Seoul’s political survival… Warships make an easy target, so there is little sense in them carrying nuclear-tipped missiles when North Korea can put them on more survivable platforms.”

North Korea has conducted six underground nuclear warhead tests since 2006. US intelligence agencies reported in April that Pyongyang currently has 10 operational intercontinental ballistic missiles. This could be increased to about 50 within a decade, the NORAD report states.

It’s not the first time North Korea has risked “fire and fury” by provoking Trump since his return to the Presidency.

The state-run Korean Central News Agency quoted Kim accusing the US of being behind increasing global tensions that could escalate into a “most destructive thermonuclear war” shortly after the November elections.

“The Korean peninsula has never been under such a critical situation as the present, in which there is a growing likelihood of a most destructive thermonuclear war breaking out amid the acutely dangerous confrontation between the belligerents,” the dynastic dictator insisted.

NORAD General Gregory Guillot testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this year that North Korea’s new solid-fueled Hwasong-19 missile poses a serious threat to North America.

The missile was test-fired in October, days before the US Presidential election.

The General said the solid-fueled missile was quicker to deploy and harder to detect before launch. This made them a far greater threat than their liquid-fuelled predecessors.

An ICBM is defined as any missile that can enter low orbit to travel distances greater than 5500km while carrying a complex nuclear warhead. Analysts believe the Hwasong-19 carries multiple warhead reentry vehicles.

Simmering tensions

“The new destroyers do make great political sense,” Vu says of Kim’s latest project.

“Big and modern warships confer national leaders with a great sense of achievement. The North Korean chairman will soon enter his 15th year in the top job, and leaving a legacy that can rival those of his father and grandfather is highly important.”

Joint US and South Korean military drills have been regular events since the end of the Korean War. But Kim said the ongoing cooperation reaffirms the allies’ hostility and “will to ignite a war”.

He insists the exercises have become increasingly provocative by “plotting (a) military nexus with the nuclear element involved”.

“And such a changing situation requires us to take counteraction with proactive and overwhelming changes,” he told officials during the warship inspection on Monday.

Pyongyang has repeatedly ignored calls from Washington and Seoul to restart peace negotiations and talks to rein in its nuclear weapons program.

The Korean Peninsula has been in a formal state of war for some 80 years. But a tense Demilitarised Zone was created in 1953 after the Korean War armistice to limit the prospect of open conflict.

The US maintains about 28,000 troops in South Korea to enforce the unsteady peace.

South Korea’s new President Lee Jae Myung last month said he wants to revive a 2018 military agreement that achieved a reduction in border tensions with the North. This had established buffer zones to reduce the chances of any accidental clash and instituted regular talks.

But the deal collapsed in 2024, with North Korea launching garbage-carrying balloons towards the South and restoring its border units to their previous stance.

Kim, however, has dismissed the opportunity: “We already did everything possible in the bilateral negotiations with the United States, and what we were eventually convinced of was not the superpower’s will to co-exist with us but its domineering stand and unchangeably aggressive and hostile policy towards the DPRK.”

How President Trump responds to the new provocations is yet to be seen.

“I happen to get along with Kim Jong-un very well,” he insisted during the 2024 presidential election campaign.

“He’d like to see me back too. I think he misses me, if you want to know the truth”.

President Trump held three meetings with Kim during his first term. In 2019, he became the first US president to visit North Korea.

Trump declared his legacy of ending the nuclear ballistic missile threat had been accomplished.

“I have solved that problem,” Trump proclaimed from the front lawn of the White House. “Now, we’re getting it memorialised and all, but that problem is largely solved.”

Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @jamieseidel.bsky.social