This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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TAIPEI, Taiwan – The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Tuesday that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program has grown “exponentially,” and urged talks between Washington and Pyongyang.
Since taking office in January, U.S. President Donald Trump has said the U.S. is in “communication” with North Korea and that Washington “may do something” with Pyongyang.
“I have been saying that we need to engage,” said Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA.
“You cannot have a country like this which is completely off the charts with its nuclear arsenal,” he said at an event hosted by the Council on Foreign Relations, a U.S. thinktank.
North Korea’s nuclear program, said Grossi, has “spawned exponentially” and it is currently building a third enrichment facility – a crucial part of building nuclear bombs.
The U.N. has imposed sanctions on North Korea aimed at limiting its nuclear weapons development, but these measures have largely failed to stop Pyongyang’s programs. The North may have up to 50 nuclear warheads, according to a 2024 report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Grossi challenged the approach that demands Pyongyang “disarm or we don’t talk,” arguing that “things are more complicated … you have to start by talking.”
He praised high-level diplomacy, specifically mentioning Trump’s letters during his first term to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“Presidential diplomacy is important,” the IAEA chief said.
Asked if Beijing and Moscow would encourage renewed IAEA dialogue with North Korea, Grossi said he doesn’t see the two countries as “against” some form of engagement. But he added that he doesn’t see either country pushing it as a priority.
The watchdog’s chief has consistently expressed concern about North Korea’s nuclear advancements.
During his visit to Japan in February, he advocated for renewed engagement with North Korea, suggesting the IAEA should reestablish its presence in the country.
The IAEA’s inspectors were kicked out of North Korea in April 2009, when Pyongyang told the agency it was “immediately ceasing all cooperation” with the U.N. body.
In November, Grossi reported continued development of a reactor at Yongbyon and apparent work on an undeclared centrifuge enrichment facility at the Kangson complex. More recently, in March, he noted indications of a new reprocessing campaign at the Yongbyon reactor.
As official policy, the U.S. has long refused to recognize Pyongyang as a nuclear power, despite its arsenal of nuclear weapons.
However, the Trump administration has veered from the official line, as the president has called North Korea a “nuclear nation” numerous times since taking office.
Most recently, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described North Korea as a “nuclear-armed” country in an apparent recognition of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons capabilities.
Rubio used the expression in a podcast interview released Wednesday, in which he discussed security challenges facing the United States, including from China, Russia and Iran.
“We live in a world with a nuclear-armed North Korea, with a nuclear-ambitious Iran,” the secretary said in the podcast hosted by The Free Press, according to a transcript provided by the State Department.
The phrase “nuclear power” has sparked concern in South Korea, as it could be interpreted as formal U.S. recognition of North Korea’s nuclear weapons capability – potentially legitimizing Kim’s regime.
Edited by Mike Firn and Stephen Wright.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This story originally appeared in Labor Notes on Mar. 28, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
In his broadest attack on federal workers and their unions to date, President Donald Trump on Thursday announced an Executive Order that claimed to end collective bargaining rights for nearly the whole federal workforce. Early estimates have the move affecting 700,000 to 1 million federal workers, including at the Veterans Administration and the Departments of Defense, Energy, State, Interior, Justice, Treasury, Health and Human Services, and even Agriculture.
This gutting of federal worker rights has the potential to be a pivotal, existential moment for the labor movement. It is a step that recognizes that the Trump administration’s rampage against the federal government is hitting a roadblock: unions.
Much remains to be seen: How quickly will the government move to execute the order? How much of it will stand up to challenges in court? Members of the Federal Unionists Network (FUN), who have been protesting ongoing firings and cuts, are holding an emergency organizing call on Sunday, March 30.
ECHOES OF PATCO
The move echoes past attacks on federal and public sector unions, including President Ronald Reagan firing 11,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981. Reagan’s move signaled “open season” on the labor movement, public and private sector alike.
The dubious mechanism that Trump is using to revoke these rights involves declaring wide swaths of the federal workforce to be too “sensitive” for union rights.
The Executive Order claims that workers across the government have “as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work.”
Historically the interpretation of this has been much narrower. While CIA operatives have not been eligible for collective bargaining, nurses at the Veterans Administration have. These rights have been law since the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, and in various forms for years prior, starting with an executive order by President Kennedy in 1962.
For example, the Veterans Administration has the largest concentration of civilian workers in the federal government, with more than 486,000 workers. The Trump Executive Order declares all of them to be excluded from collective bargaining rights.
A MILLION WORKERS AFFECTED
The order names 10 departments in part or in full, and eight other governmental bodies like agencies or commissions, ranging from all civilian employees at the Department of Defense and the Environmental Protection Agency to all workers at the Centers for Disease Control (a part of the Department of Health and Human Services) and the General Services Administration.
Federal unions immediately denounced the Executive Order, promising to challenge it in court. Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal union, said in a statement that AFGE “will fight relentlessly to protect our rights, our members, and all working Americans from these unprecedented attacks.”
It is unclear how quickly the federal government and its various agencies will act to nullify contracts and all that come with them.
At the Transportation Security Administration, where collective bargaining rights were axed in recent weeks, the impact was felt immediately: union representatives on union leave were called back to work, grievances were dropped, and contractual protections around scheduling were thrown out the window.
Some protests already in the works may become outlets for justified anger about the wholesale destruction of the federal labor movement.
Organizers with the FUN, a cross-union network of federal workers that has jumped into action as the crisis has deepened, are organizing local “Let Us Work” actions for federal workers impacted by layoffs and hosting the Sunday emergency organizing call March 30.
National mobilizations under the banner of “Hands Off” are also already planned for April 5.
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Joe DeManuelle-Hall.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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With the Ukraine War and the retreat of the United States from what has routinely been called Europe’s security architecture, states are galloping to whatever point of presumed sanctuary is on offer. The general presumption is that the galloping is done in the same step and rhythm. But Europe, for all the heavy layers of union driven diplomacy, retains its salty differences.
Poland is particularly striking in this regard, having always positioned itself as a defender against the continent’s enemies, perceived or otherwise. This messianic purpose was well on show with the exploits of King John III Sobieski in his triumphant defence of Vienna against the Ottoman Empire in 1683. The seemingly endless wars against Russia, including the massacres and repressions, have also left their wounding marks on a fragile national psyche.
These marks continue to script the approach of Warsaw’s anxiety to its traditional enemy, one that has become fixated with a nuclear option, in addition to a massive buildup of its armed forces and a defence budget that has reached 4.7% of its national income. While there is some disagreement among government officials on whether Poland should pursue its own arsenal, a general mood towards stationing the nuclear weapons of allies has taken hold. (As a matter of interest, a February 21 poll for Onet found that 52.9 percent of Poles favoured having nuclear weapons, with 27.9 percent opposed.)
This would mirror, albeit from the opposite side, the Cold War history of Poland, when its army was equipped with Soviet nuclear-capable 8K11 and 3R10 missiles. With sweet irony, those weapons were intended to be used against NATO member states.
The flirtatious offer of French President Emmanual Macron to potentially extend his country’s nuclear arsenal as an umbrella of reassurance to other European states did make an impression on Poland’s leadership. Prudence might have dictated a more reticent approach, but Prime Minister Donald Tusk would have none of that before the Polish parliament. In his words, “We must be aware that Poland must reach for the most modern capabilities also related to nuclear weapons and modern unconventional weapons.” According to the PM, “this is a race for security, not for war.”
The Polish President, Andrzej Duda, is also warm to the US option (he has been, over his time in office, profoundly pro-American), despite Tusk’s concerns about a “profound change in American geopolitics”. He was already ruminating over the idea in 2022 when he made the proposal to the Biden administration to host US nuclear weapons, one that was also repeated in June 2023 by then-Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. To have such weapons in Poland was a necessary “defensive tactic […] to Russia’s behaviour, relocating nuclear weapons to the NATO area,” he explained to the BBC. “Poland is ready to host this nuclear weapon.”
Duda then goes on to restate a familiar theme. Were US nuclear weapons stored on Polish soil, Washington would have little choice but to defend such territory against any threat. “Every kind of strategic infrastructure, American and NATO infrastructure, which we have on our soil is strengthening the inclination of the US and the North Atlantic Alliance to defend this territory.” To the Financial Times, Duda further reasoned that, as NATO’s borders had moved east in 1999, “so twenty-six years later there should also be a shift of the NATO infrastructure east.”
Much of this seems like theatrical, puffy nonsense, given Poland’s membership of the NATO alliance, which has, as its central point, Article 5. Whether it involves its protection by a fellow NATO ally using conventional or nuclear weapons, hosting such nuclear weapons is negated as a value. Poland would receive collective military aid in any case should it be attacked. But, as Jon Wolfsthal of the Federation of American Scientists reasons, an innate concern of being abandoned in the face of aggression continues to cause jitters. Tusk’s remarks were possibly “a signal of concern – maybe to motivate the United States, but clearly designed to play on the French and perhaps the British.”
The crippling paranoia of the current government in the face of any perceived Russian threat becomes even less justifiable given the presence of US troops on its soil. According to the government’s own information, a total of 10,000 troops are present on a rotational basis, with US Land Forces V Corps Forward Command based in Poznań. In February, Duda confirmed to reporters after meeting the US envoy to Ukraine Gen. Keith Kellogg that there were “no concerns that the US would reduce the level of its presence in our country, that the US would in any way withdraw from its responsibility or co-responsibility for the security of this part of Europe.”
Duda goes further, offering a sycophantic flourish. “I will say in my personal opinion, America has entered the game very strongly when it comes to ending the war in Ukraine. I know President Donald Trump, I know that he is an extremely decisive man and when he acts, he acts in a very determined and usually effective way.” With those remarks, we can only assume that the desire to have massively lethal weapons on one’s own soil that would risk obliterating life, limb and everything else is but a sporting parlour game of misplaced assumptions.
The post Poland’s Nuclear Weapons Fascination first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Image by Johannes Plenio.
One bright spot amidst all the terrible news last couple of months was the market’s reaction to DeepSeek, with BigTech firms like Nvidia and Microsoft and Google taking major hits in their capitalizations. Billionaires Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Oracle’s Larry Ellison—who had, just a few days back, been part of Donald Trump’s first news conference—lost a combined 48 billion dollars in paper money. As a good friend of mine, who shall go unnamed because of their use of an expletive, said “I hate all AI, but it’s hard to not feel joy that these asshats are losing a lot of money.”
Another set of companies lost large fractions of their stock valuations: U.S. power, utility and natural gas companies. Electric utilities like Constellation, Vistra and Talen had gained stock value on the basis of the argument that there would be a major increase in demand for energy due to data centers and AI, allowing them to invest in new power plants and expensive nuclear projects (such as small modular reactor), and profit from this process. [The other source of revenue, at least in the case of Constellation, was government largesse.] The much lower energy demand from DeepSeek, at least as reported, renders these plans questionable at best.
Remembering Past Ranfare
But we have been here before. Consider, for example, the arguments made for building the V. C. Summer nuclear project in South Carolina. That project came out of the hype cycle during the first decade of this century, during one of the many so-called nuclear renaissances that have been regularly announced since the 1980s. [In 1985, for example, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Alvin Weinberg predicted such a renaissance and a second nuclear era—that is yet to materialize.] During the hype cycle in the first decade of this century, utility companies proposed constructing more than 30 reactors, of which only four proceeded to construction. Two of these reactors were in South Carolina.
As with most nuclear projects, public funding was critical. The funding came through the 2005 Energy Policy Act, the main legislative outcome from President George W. Bush’s push for nuclear power, which offered several incentives, including production tax credits that were valued at approximately $2.2 billion for V. C. Summer.
The justification offered by the CEO of the South Carolina Electric & Gas Company to the state’s Public Service Commission was the expectation that the company’s energy sales would increase by 22 percent between 2006 and 2016, and by nearly 30 percent by 2019. In fact, South Carolina Electric & Gas Company’s energy sales declined by 3 percent by the time 2016 rolled in. [Such mistakes are standard in the history of nuclear power. In the 1970s, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and utility companies were projecting that “about one thousand large nuclear power reactors” would be built “by the year 2000 and about two thousand, mostly breeder reactors, by 2010” on the basis of the grossly exaggerated estimates of how rapidly electricity production would grow during the same period. It turned out that “utilities were projecting four to nine times more electric power would be produced in the United States by nuclear power in 2000 than actually happened”.] In the case of South Carolina, the wrong projection about energy sales was the basis of the $9 billion plus spent on the abandoned V. C. Summer project.
The Racket Continues
With no sense of shame for that failure, one of the two companies involved in that fiasco recently expressed an interest in selling this project. On January 22, Santee Cooper’s President and CEO wrote, “We are seeing renewed interest in nuclear energy, fueled by advanced manufacturing investments, AI-driven data center demand, and the tech industry’s zero-carbon targets…Considering the long timelines required to bring new nuclear units online, Santee Cooper has a unique opportunity to explore options for Summer Units 2 and 3 and their related assets that could allow someone to generate reliable, carbon emissions-free electricity on a meaningfully shortened timeline”.
A couple of numbers to put those claims about timelines in perspective: the average nuclear reactor takes about 10 years to go from the beginning of construction—usually marked by when concrete is poured into the ground—to when it starts generating electricity. But one cannot go from deciding to build a reactor to pouring concrete in the ground overnight. It takes about five to ten years needed before the physical activities involved in building a reactor to obtain the environmental permits, and the safety evaluations, carry out public hearings (at least where they are held), and, most importantly, raise the tens of billions of dollars needed. Thus, even the “meaningfully shortened timeline” will mean upwards of a decade.
Going by the aftermath of the Deepseek, the AI and data center driven energy demand bubble seems to have crashed on a timeline far shorter than even that supposedly “meaningfully shortened timeline”. There is good reason to expect that this AI bubble wasn’t going to last, for there was no real business case to allow for the investment of billions. What DeepSeek did was to also show that the billions weren’t needed. As Emily Bender, a computer scientist who co-authored the famous paper about large language models that coined the term stochastic parrots, put it: “The emperor still has no clothes, but it’s very distressing to the emperor that their non-clothes can be made so much more cheaply.”
But utility companies are not giving up. At a recent meeting organized by the Nuclear Energy Institute, the lobbying organization for the nuclear industry, the Chief Financial Officer of Constellation Energy, the company owning the most nuclear reactors in the United States, admitted that the DeepSeek announcement “wasn’t a fun day” but maintained that it does not “change the demand outlook for power from the data economy. It’s going to come.” Likewise, during an “earnings call” earlier in February, Duke Energy President Harry Sideris maintained that data center hyperscalers are “full speed ahead”.
Looking Deeper
Such repetition, even in the face of profound questions about whether such a growth will occur is to be expected, for it is key to the stock price evaluations and market capitalizations of these companies. The constant reiteration of the need for more and more electricity and other resources also adopts other narrative devices shown to be effective in a wide variety of settings, for example, pointing to the possibility that China would take the lead in some technological field or the other, and explicitly or implicitly arguing how utterly unacceptable that state of affairs would be. Never asking whether it even matters who wins this race for AI. These tropes and assertions about running out of power contribute to creating the economic equivalent of what Stuart Hall termed “moral panic”, thus allowing possible opposition to be overruled.
One effect of this slew of propaganda has been the near silence on the question of whether such growth of data centers or AI is desirable, even though there is ample evidence of the enormous environmental impacts of developing AI and building hyperscale data centers. Or for that matter the desirability of nuclear power.
As Lewis Mumford once despaired: “our technocrats are so committed to the worship of the sacred cow of technology that they say in effect: Let the machine prevail, though the earth be poisoned, the air be polluted, the food and water be contaminated, and mankind itself be condemned to a dreary and useless life, on a planet no more fit to support life than the sterile surface of the moon”.
But, of course, we live in a time of monsters. At a time when the levers of power are wielded by a megalomaniac who would like to colonize Mars, and despoil its already sterile environment.
The post Continued Propaganda About AI and Nuclear Power appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by M.V. Ramana.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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North Korea’s state media on Saturday provided a rare glimpse of the country’s first nuclear-powered guided missile submarine that is expected to serve as a “powerful nuclear deterrent” in the future.
The Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA, released a set of images taken during a recent inspection tour by leader, Kim Jong Un, to North Korea’s key shipyards, including one where the first nuclear submarine is being built.
In two photos, the leader and his entourage were seen next to the large body of a ship, believed to have been taken at a submarine facility in the port city of Sinpo on the east coast.
KCNA quoted Kim saying that “the development of the naval force into an elite and nuclear-armed force constitutes an important content in the strategy for the development of the national defense.”
North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un inspects a nuclear submarine during a visit to a shipyard, in this photo released by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency on March 8, 2025. (KCNA/via Reuters)Pyongyang has a fleet of around 70 aging submarines, most of them are classified as “midget” for their small size.
In September 2023 it launched the first so-called “tactical nuclear attack submarine,” a modified Soviet-era Romeo-class submarine, which North Korea acquired from China in the 1970s.
Despite the name, it is not nuclear-powered but fitted with diesel-electric propulsion, relatively noisy and slow, hence vulnerable to modern anti-submarine warfare. The “nuclear” component refers to the possibility of nuclear missile armament yet analysts have raised doubt about its capabilities.
The KCNA report didn’t say when the construction of the new submarine would be completed.
North Korea’s largest warships
Kim Jong Un also visited some other shipyards where North Korea’s largest warships are being constructed.
“Only when there is a powerful naval force that no one can provoke, is it possible to defend the security of the country,” he said.
North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un visits a shipyard, in this photo released by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency on March 8, 2025. (KCNA/via Reuters)Pyongyang is believed to be building two new warships with displacement of 3,000 to 5,000 tons at Nampo shipyard on the west coast and Chongjin on the east coast.
Several of KCNA’s photos show the North Korean leader inspecting the upper structure of a ship, likely at the Nampo shipyard, with details of the deck being blurred.
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North Korea has a substantial surface fleet in numbers but it is predominantly composed of smaller patrol and coastal vessels of limited capability.
The two ships under-construction are expected to be fitted with a vertical launch system for missiles, a first for a North Korean surface vessel. A report by the British think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies said that such a ship could be carrying ballistic or surface-to-air missiles yet their capabilities remain to be seen.
The North Korean shipyards’ ability to replicate the performance of the world’s latest combat systems and other associated capabilities is deemed by the report as being “limited.”
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Image courtesy CODEPINK.
Once again the ‘Gloomsday’ Machine is reporting the awful news about the growing nuclear threats, the widening nuclear proliferation, and ongoing modernization and development of new weapons most recently in the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor which defines itself as “a research project managed by Norwegian People’s Aid with contributions from a broad range of external experts and institutions, including the Federation of American Scientists and the Norwegian Academy of International Law”.
There is never any attempt to make people aware of how the nuclear arms race and new forms of proliferation are being driven and the many missed opportunities, over the 80-year course of the nuclear age to reverse the Doomsday machine and move forward to a new world at peace.
A simple study of history would make it apparent that it is the United States, the only country to actually drop the bomb in the tragic annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which has been driving the nuclear arms race from the very beginning of the nuclear age.
It began when US President Harry Truman turned down USSR Prime Minister Joseph Stalin’s proposal to turn the bomb over to United Nations, which was formed “to end the scourge of war” with its first resolution calling for nuclear disarmament. After the US refusal, Russia then went ahead to get its own nuclear bomb, and the arms race was off and running!
One need only recall the sorry history of rejected agreements, broken treaties, conditions that would have moved nuclear abolition forward, to know that something’s amiss in how the establishment is talking about nuclear dangers, merely assailing us with reports that the numbers of nuclear weapons available for use is continuously increasing and new countries are considering acquiring these deadly weapons.
Nor are we reading about how Reagan rejected Gorbachev’s offer to give up Star Wars as a condition for both countries to eliminate all their nuclear weapons when the wall came down. Nor are we hearing about the repeated motions from China and Russia in the UN for the Prevention of an Arms Race in Outer Space, opposed by the US, as well as their draft treaty proposals tabled in 2008 and 2014 in the consensus-bound Committee on Disarmament in Geneva for negotiations on a space weapons ban, vetoed by the United States, which refused to permit even discussion on a space weapons ban treaty.
The Gloomsday bunch never mention how Putin was turned down by Obama when he asked the US to negotiate a Cyberwar Ban Treaty after the US and Israel hacked Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility with the Stuxnet virus, or that China and Russia support UN resolutions for such a treaty which the US opposes.
Nor are we hearing about how Bush walked out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Treaty which required the US and the USSR to have only one anti-ballistic missile base in each nation, and since that time, the US has now put new missile bases in Romania and Poland.
And while we hear of Putin having recently placed Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus, during the Ukraine war, it is never mentioned together with the fact that the US has had nuclear weapons for years in Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Turkey as part of its NATO agreement to use our nuclear weapons on their behalf!
Indeed, at a recent Bulletin of Atomic Scientists webinar announcing the world’s closest advance to doomsday, a speaker mentioned that Russia walked out of the CTBT, but he never mentioned that the US never joined the treaty. Although Clinton signed the treaty, the US, unlike Russia never ratified it.
If we’re going to ban the bomb and get nuclear weapons states to support the new Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, we have to tell the truth about who is the perpetrator in the ever expanding nuclear arms race! For another way to talk about the bomb, see Code Pink’s Peace Clock. Peace Clock – CODEPINK – Women for Peace.
The post New Report Warns of Increasing Nuclear Dangers appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Alice Slater.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Ankit Panda, an expert on North Korea’s nuclear program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was interviewed by Radio Free Asia regarding Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions and how its capabilities might be improved through North Korea’s support of Russia in its war with Ukraine.
Panda, a Stanton senior fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at Carnegie, also said that North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, very likely can be used to attack an American city, and that Pyongyang might have as many as 300 warheads within the next 10 years.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
RFA: If North Korea were to launch an ICBM at the U.S. right now, do you think the U.S. would be vulnerable?
Ankit Panda: That’s a good question. First of all, would North Korea launch an ICBM? Probably not — it would be essentially suicidal. There’s no reason for North Korea to attack the United States unprovoked.
But the technical question that you asked, “Can North Korea essentially detonate a nuclear warhead over an American city?” — the answer to that question in my view is very probably yes, and that’s a carefully chosen phrase, “very probably yes.”
The North Koreans, the reliability that they have is probably a lot lower than what the United States has, but it’s probably sufficient for the purposes that Kim Jong Un seeks which is to deter the United States.
The only question that Kim has to ask himself is, “In a serious crisis or a war between the United States and North Korea, would an American president be worried that if the war got out of control, American cities could be vulnerable to nuclear attack?” And I think the answer there is absolutely.
RFA: But can’t the United States intercept North Korean ICBMs with its missile defense system?
Panda: The U.S. has a very limited homeland missile defense capability. We have a total of 44 interceptors that are capable of destroying incoming ICBMs. These interceptors are actually deployed in Alaska. There’s 40 of them in Alaska and four of them in California at Vandenberg Air Force Base. These are designed to deal with North Korean ICBM threats.
But it gets a little complicated here because it’s not that there’s 44 interceptors, which means the U.S. can defend against 44 North Korean ICBMs. Probably the U.S. would look to use 3 to 4 interceptors against one incoming ICBM reentry vehicle. And so then if you’re in North Korea, you have a solution to this problem, right? You build more ICBMs. And so that is where the North Koreans have gone.
I would argue that that is a chance that would be very difficult for an American president to take — this idea that the North Koreans could launch ICBMs and our interceptors might not actually work.
North Korean missile range (AFP)RFA: How important are ICBMs to Kim Jong Un’s overall deterrence strategy? What about other types of weapons systems we’ve been hearing about, like hypersonic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and fighter jets?
Panda: So my assessment would be that, yes, he definitely needs ICBM warheads because that is the cornerstone of their deterrence strategy. The United States homeland needs to be held at risk for North Korea’s deterrence to have the effects that that Kim Jong UN seeks.
But simultaneously, I do think the new series of short range ballistic missiles, the Hwasong-11s in particular, the Hwasong-11A, (which is) what the US calls the KN-23 … That is now, I think, a system that the North Koreans are emphasizing quite a bit. They’ve been using it in against Ukraine in the course of their support for Russia. And so they’re receiving quite a bit of information about that system’s performance. And it’s also quite a bit of a challenging system for missile defense systems to deal with.
So I do think that that will be one of the chosen platforms for for Kim to place nuclear warheads on.
RFA: And those would be intended for targets in South Korea and Japan, within the same region, correct?
Panda: That’s right. U.S. bases, missile defense systems, ports, airfields, airfields with stealth fighters in South Korea, South Korean missile launch bases. All of those would be targets for those kinds of weapons.
RFA: Let’s talk more about the KN-23 and how it was used on the battlefield against Ukraine. Can we say what impact it might have on the Korean peninsula based on it’s performance in support of Russia?
Panda: So the use of the KN-23 against Ukraine marks the first ever use of North Korean ballistic missiles in war, so that that in itself is quite important because you can you can do all the testing you want in peacetime. You can do exercises on your own territory, but there’s something quite different to the experience of operating a missile on a real battlefield.
And the Russians, you know, we think the Russians were operating these missiles with the help of North Korean technical advisers, who were also collecting data on how these missiles are performing, feeding that back to the Academy of Defense Science and the Missile General Bureau in North Korea to improve these capabilities.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean Workers’ Party General Secretary Kim Jong-un after signing the ‘Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Agreement’ at the Kumsusan State Guest House in Pyongyang in June 2024. (Yonhap News)So we know from Ukrainian intelligence that there has been change in the KN-23s. … They used to be very inaccurate when they were first used. And it turns out there was a report in December 2024 that the precision has improved significantly, and that is a very, very important milestone for the North Koreans because — especially if they do want to deploy tactical nuclear weapons — precision of the missile system matters quite a bit because the yield of the weapon is a lot lower, the yield being the explosive power.
And so if you’re trying to leverage those types of tactical nuclear weapons for maximal military utility–let’s say you want to hit an airfield in South Korea that has F-35s that you can’t deal with once they take off, so you have to destroy them before they take off. You really need to make sure that the the yield of the weapon and the precision of the missile match essentially in terms of the mission that you’re trying to accomplish.
And so I really think that we shouldn’t underrate the ways in which North Korea’s missile transfers to Russia are very directly augmenting Kim Jong Un’s nuclear ambitions and strategy.
RFA: When we talk about North Korean involvement in Ukraine, experts and officials say that North Korea is getting from Russia food or other kinds of support, but regarding missile technology, what does Pyongyang need that Moscow can give?
Panda: The area where I think the Russians can really help them is with guidance computers, cruise missile maneuvering, cruise missile control and potentially even countermeasures, other types of ways in which to just improve the reliability of North Korea’s manufacturing standards for missile systems.
So all of that, I think will will happen is probably happening in some form space launch technologies, too. I think the Russians will be very, very eager to to help the North Koreans out. That has been the most public facing component of technical cooperation.
RFA: As North Korea and Russia grow closer, is there a possibility that Russia will recognize North Korea as an official nuclear state?
Panda: Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has pretty explicitly said that Russia no longer views North Korea as a nonproliferation concern. Essentially, you know, since the early 1990s, the major powers China, Russia, the United States and Japan, South Korea, the European Union, the whole world has seen North Korea as a nonproliferation problem.
They’re the only country to have signed the Nonproliferation Treaty, left that treaty and built nuclear weapons. So it matters how you deal with North Korea for that reason. But it also matters in a big way that the North Koreans are really presenting unacceptable nuclear risks, in my opinion, to the United States and its allies, and so that demands a focus on risk reduction.
President Donald Trump and North Korean General Secretary Kim Jong Un meet in Singapore on June 12, 2018. (Yonhap News)And so this this fact that Trump has called North Korea a nuclear power, I know that got quite a bit of a reaction in South Korea.
I’ve made the argument that, first of all, it’s it’s sort of overrated. North Korea has very publicly said in the past that they actually don’t care about the status question of whether or not they’re acknowledged, and they will never be a nuclear weapons state under the NPT, right, which is the only legitimate form of nuclear possession that really exists in the international system.
So I don’t think Trump is seeking to legitimize North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons. He’s simply saying something that even South Korea openly acknowledges, right?
RFA: How do you see North Korea’s nuclear development playing out over the next 10 years?
Panda: I think about this quite a bit because I do think it’s it’s probably the likely outcome that Kim will continue to modernize and size up his nuclear forces.
The North Korean objective with its nuclear modernization is to get to a point where what those of us in the nuclear strategy field call “the condition of mutual vulnerability” manifests between the United States and North Korea.
That means that Kim Jong Un has to feel confident. And this is very subjective, right? I’ve never met Kim Jong Un. I don’t know what’s in his mind, but Kim has to feel confident that no matter the crisis, no matter the war, the conventional war, that the United States and South Korea will not be able to destroy all of his nuclear weapons.
And that in turn, the president of the United States and the president of Republic of Korea will understand that they can’t destroy all of Kim’s nuclear weapons, which means that deterrence is stable….
So what does that mean for how many warheads they’ll build? I don’t know, probably a few hundred. I think by the mid 2030s we might be looking at a North Korea with 300-plus nuclear warheads.
RFA: How many warheads would you estimate that North Korea has right now?
Panda: So one of the challenges is that, since 2009, foreign inspectors have not been to North Korea. And so all of the evidence we have about fissile material production is really in the open source and from certain assessments the U.S. intelligence community has made.
Without people going into the country over time, the uncertainties, the error bars essentially grow wider and wider. I say that because my estimate would be that the North Koreans have somewhere between 50 to 100 nuclear warheads today. That’s a very broad range, right. And over time, that that range will continue to grow.
It’s quite possible that 10 years from now the North Koreans are the fourth largest nuclear force on Earth, after the U.S., Russia and China — depending on the choices that France, India, Pakistan and the U.K. make.
But none of those countries really seems to be heading towards a huge build-up in that way, whereas the North Koreans do have quite a few reasons to build up.
Edited by Eugene Whong.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Jaewoo Park for RFA Korean.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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TAIPEI, Taiwan – North Korea said Tuesday it will stick to its policy of bolstering its nuclear forces, days after the United States, Japan and South Korea reaffirmed their goal of the complete denuclearization of the North.
The top diplomats of the U.S. and its two Asian allies on Saturday also decried “systematic, widespread and gross” violations of human rights in the reclusive state.
The North’s foreign ministry dismissed denuclearization as an “unrealistic and failed concept,” condemning U.S. policies as “shortsighted,” as reported by its state-run Korea Central News Agency on Tuesday.
North Korea will “consistently adhere to the new line of bolstering up the nuclear force” and “thoroughly deter the U.S. and its vassal forces from threats and blackmail” by making use of all political and military tools at its disposal, the ministry added.
It also warned that any provocation would be met with decisive countermeasures, framing its nuclear program as essential for peace, sovereignty and self-defense.
US ‘openness for dialogue’
South Korea’s foreign ministry said last week’s trilateral talks between U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya and South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul sent a “strong” warning against North Korean provocations and stressed their commitment to reinforcing the global sanctions regime against it.
The ministry added the U.S. reaffirmed its “ironclad” security commitments to South Korea and Japan, “backed by America’s unmatched military strength, including its nuclear capabilities.”
But the U.S. Department of State said in a statement following a separate meeting between Rubio and Cho that the U.S. remained “open” to a dialogue with the North – an element omitted from the South Korean statement.
“Secretary Rubio reaffirmed America’s commitment to the complete denuclearization of the DPRK while expressing the Trump administration’s openness to dialogue,” the department said, without elaborating.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK, is the official name of North Korea.
The South has not commented on the U.S. statement.
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The inconsistency raised concern in Japan where its leader said there should be no divergence among the three allies on North Korea.
“Maintaining the regime is North Korea’s core national interest, and we must seriously consider how to separate this from the issue of its nuclear possession,” said Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Monday during a parliamentary session in response to a question about the U.S. stance on North Korea and its implication for cooperation between the U.S., Japan and South Korea.
“We must ensure continued cooperation and communication among Japan, the U.S., and South Korea on achieving complete denuclearization while addressing North Korea’s demands for security guarantees,” Ishiba noted.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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TAIPEI, Taiwan – North Korea reiterated its commitment to advancing its nuclear capabilities, emphasizing that its nuclear weapons were not a “bargaining chip,” in an apparent response to a U.S.-Japan summit in which the leaders of the two allies reaffirmed their goal of the complete denuclearization of the North.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba met in Washington on Friday and reaffirmed their resolute commitment to a North Korea without nuclear weapons, while underscoring the importance of trilateral cooperation with South Korea.
During a speech on Saturday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un referred to new plans for bolstering “all deterrences” and reaffirmed the “unshakable policy of more highly developing the nuclear forces,” the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA, reported.
Kim added North Korea “does not want unnecessary tension” in the region, saying, however, that it would take “sustained countermeasures to ensure the regional military balance” to prevent the outbreak of war and ensure peace and security on the peninsula, KCNA said on Sunday, without elaborating.
North Korea’s nuclear weapons were not a bargaining chip but designed for actual use against the “origin” of any attempts by its enemies to invade, KCNA said in a separate report.
“Our nuclear force is not something that can be advertised to earn recognition from anybody and not even a bargaining chip that can be exchanged for a mere sum of money,” KCNA reported on Saturday.
“Our country’s nuclear force is invariably for real combat use in a bid to swiftly cut out the origin of any invasion attempt by hostile forces that infringe upon the country’s sovereign right and people’s safety, and threaten regional peace,” it added.
KCNA did not mention the U.S.-Japan summit but criticized NATO and the European Union as “ludicrous” for stating that they would not recognize North Korea as a nuclear power.
‘Complete denuclearization’
The North’s remarks came after Trump and Ishiba, in their first in-person meeting, reaffirmed their commitment to the “complete denuclearization of North Korea,” while Trump vowed to ensure stability on the Korean peninsula.
“The two leaders expressed their serious concerns over and the need to address the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and reaffirmed their resolute commitment to the complete denuclearization of the DPRK,” they said in the statement on Friday.
“Both countries underscored the need to deter and counter the DPRK’s malicious cyber activities and the DPRK’s increasing military cooperation with Russia. In addition, both countries affirmed the importance of the Japan-US-ROK trilateral partnership in responding to the DPRK and upholding regional peace and prosperity,” they added.
The Republic of Korea, or ROK, is South Korea’s official name.
US President Donald Trump (R) and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba hold a joint press conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on Feb. 7, 2025. (Mandel Ngna/AFP)Referring to his discussions with Ishiba, Trump pointed out their shared commitment in ensuring stability in the region.
“The prime minister and I will be working closely together to maintain peace and security, and I also say peace through strength and all over the Indo-Pacific,” said Trump. “And to that end, we also remain committed to the effort I began in my first term to ensure safety and stability on the Korean Peninsula.”
During a joint press conference, Trump said that getting along with Kim was “a good thing, not a bad thing.”
“We will have relations with North Korea, with Kim JongUn. I got along with him very well,” said Trump. “We had a good relationship, and I think it’s a very big asset for everybody that I do get along with him.”
Trump launched an unprecedented diplomatic effort with North Korea during his first term, meeting Kim three times.
In January, Trump was asked in an interview if he planned to “reach out” to the North Korean leader, and he answered: “I will, yeah. He liked me.”
Japanese abductees
Ishiba said he used the talks with Trump to deliver his “strong sense of urgency” regarding the issue of Japanese citizens abducted by Pyongyang decades ago.
“Now that President Trump is in power again, if we are able to move towards resolving issues with North Korea, it would be agreed,” Ishiba said in response to a question over whether he would like to see Trump resume diplomacy with Pyongyang.
“For us, that includes not only denuclearization, but also resolving the abductee issue. Not only the abductees, but also their families too are aging.”
US President Donald Trump shakes hands with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on Feb. 7, 2025. (JIM WATSON/AFP)The issue of abductions remains a significant obstacle to diplomatic normalization between North Korea and Japan.
Japan says it has confirmed the abduction of 17 citizens by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s, to work as language teachers for North Korean spies, and 12 are still in the North.
North Korea contends that of the 12, eight have died, and four never entered North Korea, insisting there is no issue to be resolved.
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Taiwan, South China Sea
Trump and Ishiba also reaffirmed their firm opposition to any attempts by China to alter the status quo through force or coercion in the East China Sea. They also condemned China’s maritime claims, the militarization of reclaimed features, and its “threatening and provocative” actions in the South China Sea.
“The two leaders emphasized the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait as an indispensable element of security and prosperity for the international community,” they said in a joint statement.
“They encouraged the peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues, and opposed any attempts to unilaterally change the status quo by force or coercion.”
South Korea welcomed the joint statement, vowing to maintain its diplomatic efforts for the complete denuclearization of North Korea based on close trilateral cooperation with the U.S. and Japan.,
China had not officially commented on the U.S.-Japanese statement at time of publication.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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North Korea’s leader visited a nuclear-material production base and Nuclear Weapons Institute and warned that “confrontation with the most vicious hostile countries is inevitable,” and his country must bolster its nuclear forces, the North’s state media reported on Wednesday.
Kim Jong Un’s warning came days after U.S. President Donald Trump signalled he might be willing to resume the engagement he embarked on with North Korea during his first term in office.
North Korea has reported Trump’s return to power but has not said anything about his comments or speculation that contacts between the two rivals might resume.
Instead, Kim stressed the dangers North Korea faced, the Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA, reported.
“The DPRK’s security situation, the world’s most unstable situation in which a long-term confrontation with the most vicious hostile countries is inevitable, makes it indispensable for the country to steadily strengthen the nuclear shield,” KCNA, reported Kim as saying, referring to the country by the initials of its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The news agency did not identify the “hostile countries” but North Korea regards the United States and its ally, South Korea, as its main enemies.
KCNA also did not identify the nuclear-material production base that Kim visited or say when he was there.
In September, state media reported that Kim made a similar visit as North Korea unveiled for the first time details of its uranium enrichment facility, where he called for increasing the number of centrifuges for enrichment so it could increase its nuclear arsenal.
KCNA has not revealed the location of the facility but South Korea and the United States believe North Korea operates uranium enrichment facilities at the Kangson nuclear complex near the capital Pyongyang and at the Yongbyon nuclear site.
Kim was also reported to have visited the Nuclear Weapons Institute in September.
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North Korea has tested nuclear devices six times since 2006 and has developed missiles believed to be capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.
During his first term, Trump embarked on an unprecedented but ultimately unsuccessful bid to engage with North Korea to try to get it to abandon its nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief.
Trump has recently suggested he would be open to a new effort but North Korea has reiterated that it had no intention of giving up its nuclear program, blaming the United States for creating tensions.
While the United States and its allies call for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, North Korea says it needs its nuclear weapons to defend itself.
Edited by Mike Firn
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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An Australian energy system relying on a the Coalition’s nuclear power plan would shrink the opportunity for emerging technology like AI and the data centres that power it, the Prime Minister warned on Friday while launching his yearly agenda. During a National Press Club address in Canberra, Anthony Albanese said the Opposition’s energy plan left…
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TAIPEI, Taiwan – North Korea reiterated that it had no intention of giving up its nuclear program, blaming the United States for “creating tension” on the Korean peninsula, after the U.S. President Donald Trump described the country as a “nuclear power.”
Since 2006, North Korea has conducted six nuclear tests and has consistently declared that it will never relinquish its nuclear weapons. It also demands recognition as a nuclear power, which both the U.S. and its ally, South Korea, firmly reject, instead calling for North Korea’s “denuclearization.”
But Trump’s reference on Monday has raised the possibility of a shift in U.S. policy towards recognizing the country’s nuclear status.
“As a responsible nuclear weapons state, we will continue to make efforts to prevent all forms of war and to protect peace and stability,” said Jo Chol Su, North Korea’s permanent representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva during a U.N. conference on disarmament on Tuesday.
“The United States has been conducting aerial espionage against North Korea since the beginning of the year … U.S. political and military provocations are the root cause of triggering armed conflicts and undermining regional stability.
“The strongest defense is the only way to protect peace. We will strongly deter any attempt by hostile forces to provoke us militarily,” Jo added.
Jo’s remarks were in response to criticism from U.N. member states over the North’s nuclear and missile programs.
In particular, Kim Il-hoon, South Korea’s deputy permanent representative to the U.N. in Geneva, pointed out that North Korea had violated U.N. Security Council resolutions by providing Russia with a large quantity of weapons and ballistic missiles, as well as sending more than 11,000 troops to help Russia in its war against Ukraine.
“The recent capture of two North Korean soldiers is a sign of North Korean troops’ participation in the war,” Kim said.
As many as 12,000 North Korean soldiers are in Russia’s Kursk region, fighting Ukrainian forces there, according to Ukraine and the U.S. – although neither Moscow nor Pyongyang has acknowledged this.
Ukraine said its forces captured two North Korean soldiers in Kursk in January. Both were wounded and are in custody in Kyiv, reportedly receiving medical attention.
“North Korea has redefined inter-Korean relations by framing the South as an enemy state, effectively dismantling the psychological barrier to launching a preemptive nuclear attack on our people – all of whom are Koreans,” Kim said, referring to Pyongyang’s decision to officially abandon its long-standing goal of peaceful reunification with South Korea.
In January 2024, the North declared the South its “primary foe and invariable principal enemy,” closing agencies dedicated to inter-Korean cooperation and enhancing its military capabilities.
“The lowered threshold for North Korea’s nuclear aggression poses a direct threat to peace and stability in the region,” Kim added.
North Korea’s comments followed Trump’s reference to it as a nuclear power, which hinted at a possible softening of the longstanding U.S. demand that the North dismantles its weapons program.
U.S. President Donald Trump takes the oath of office as Barron and Melania Trump look on at the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)Japan and South Korea – two important Asian allies of the U.S. – rejected the term.
“North Korea’s nuclear and missile development is a threat to the peace and security of Japan and the international community, and we cannot accept it,” said Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi on Tuesday.
“We will also work with the international community, including the U.S. and South Korea, to demand the complete dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs by promoting the full implementation of the relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions,” he added.
South Korea earlier said the North could never be recognized as a nuclear power because to do so would imply abandoning the goal of denuclearization.
The U.S. had refused to recognize North Korea as a nuclear state to uphold global non-proliferation norms and avoid legitimizing Pyongyang’s defiance of international agreements.
There have been lingering concerns that acknowledging the North’s nuclear status could destabilize regional security, embolden Pyongyang, and encourage South Korea and Japan to pursue their own nuclear programs.
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Trump was inaugurated as the 47th U.S. president on Monday, marking the beginning of his second term. During his first term, he embarked on unprecedented but ultimately unsuccessful engagement with North Korea to try to get it to abandon its nuclear weapons in exchange for sanctions relief.
North Korean state media reported his inauguration without comment.
“Donald Trump was inaugurated as president in the United States, and he was elected as the 47th president of the United States in the election held last November,” the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency reported on Tuesday.
The article was also published in Rodong Sinmun newspaper, which North Koreans can read.
North Korean state media did not report any news related to the U.S. election in November.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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TAIPEI, Taiwan – U.S. President Donald Trump described North Korea as a “nuclear power”, raising the prospect of a change in the long-held U.S. policy of denying North Korea recognition as a nuclear weapons state and insisting that it abandon its weapons program.
Trump, who was inaugurated for a second term as U.S. president on Monday, has hinted at the possibility of reviving his unprecedented, but ultimately unsuccessful, diplomatic effort that he pursued in his first term to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programme in exchange for sanctions relief.
North Korea has tested nuclear devices six times since 2006 and says it will never give up its bombs. It insists on being recognized as a nuclear power, a demand both the U.S. and its ally South Korea have dismissed, insisting instead that North Korea agree to its “denuclearization.”
The term “nuclear power” is normally taken to refer to five nuclear-weapon states – U.S., China, Britain, France and Russia – that are officially recognized as possessing nuclear weapons in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, otherwise known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT.
Trump, speaking to reporters at the Oval Office after being sworn in as the 47th U.S. president in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington earlier in the day, referred to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who he met three times during his first term.
“He is a nuclear power. We got along. I think he’ll be happy to see I’m coming back,” said Trump.
“I was very friendly with him. He liked me. I liked him. We got along very well. They thought that was a tremendous threat,” Trump told reporters without elaborating. It was not clear to whom he was referring to when he said they thought it was a threat.
During a Senate confirmation hearing last week, Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, also called the North a “nuclear power”.
South Korea rejected the term, stressing that North Korea could never be recognized as a nuclear power because to do so would imply abandoning the goal of denuclearization.
In response to Trump’s remarks on Monday, the South Korean defense ministry said it would continue to push for North Korea’s denuclearization.
“Denuclearization of not only the Korean peninsula but also North Korea should be continually pursued as a prerequisite for permanent peace and stability in the world,” Jeon Ha-kyou, the ministry’s spokesperson, said in a regular briefing.
If Trump is intent on reviving diplomatic efforts with North Korea, he might find Kim has less appetite for engaging with the U.S. because of the development of ties with Russia over recent years.
Russia has been forging a closer relationship with North Korea since President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian forces to invade Ukraine in 2022.
North Korea has sent large volumes of weapons and some 12,000 troops to help Russia with its war, the United States and its allies say. In exchange, analysts and Western officials suspect that North Korea is receiving various Russian support including technological aid for its space program.
‘Tough cookie’
Separately, Trump held a brief talk over a video-link with American troops stationed in South Korea and asked them how the North Korean leader has been doing.
“How are we doing over there? How’s Kim Jong Un doing?” Trump said, while talking to the U.S. Forces Korea personnel based in Camp Humphreys.
In an apparent reference to the North Korean leader, Trump said the troops face “somebody with pretty bad intentions.”
“You would say that, although I developed a pretty good relationship with him, but he’s a tough cookie,” he added.
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Trump raised his engagement with North Korea during his election campaign and in a sign that he might have an eye on reviving the effort, he has picked an aide – William Beau Harrison – who was involved in planning the summit with Kim in Singapore in 2018 and in Vietnam in 2019.
Trump met Kim for a third time on the heavily fortified border between North and South Korea later in 2019 when Trump became the first U.S. president to set foot on North Korean soil.
But the meetings led to no progress on efforts to get North Korea to abandon its nuclear and missile programs.
U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un pose at a military demarcation line at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, in Panmunjom, South Korea, June 30, 2019. (KCNA via Reuters)Last September, North Korea revealed details of its uranium enrichment facility, with Kim calling for more centrifuges to help increase the country’s nuclear arsenal.
A month later Pyongyang said the launch of a new intercontinental ballistic missile gave it the “irreversible” means of delivering nuclear weapons.
Kim had appeared to rule out the prospect of improving relations with the U.S. under a second incoming Trump presidency, saying in November that negotiations with the U.S. had in the past only confirmed its unwavering hostility.
Kim did not refer to Trump by name but said that given U.S. policy towards North Korea, his country’s only option was to achieve the “most powerful military capabilities,” North Korean state media reported.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Renewables continue to be the cheapest new-build electricity-generating technology, while nuclear power is around twice as expensive and has “no unique cost advantages” from its long operational life, despite the claims of nuclear power advocates. This is according to the CSIRO, which on Monday released the draft of its new GenCost report, an annual forecast…
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This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The search for an energy alternative to fossil fuels has renewed interest in nuclear power production across the globe. Despite nuclear boosters’ promotion of the energy source, Tim Judson of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service calls nuclear power an “elaborate greenwashing scheme.” Nuclear is “not carbon-free,” says Diné organizer Leona Morgan, who highlights the fuel costs and environmental contamination — particularly within and around Indigenous communities in the southwest United States — of the uranium mining required to produce nuclear power. Because the carbon costs before and after nuclear generation are not factored into energy calculations, says Morgan, “it’s really not going to solve the energy crisis.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Tech companies are turning to nuclear to fulfill the skyrocketing energy needs of artificial intelligence, with major corporations like Amazon, Google and Microsoft announcing plans to invest in nuclear power. But the speed at which energy needs are growing may not align with the construction or revitalization of nuclear infrastructure, says Alex de Vries, who researches the unintended consequences of AI and cryptocurrencies. There may be a “mismatch between the needs of tech companies today” and the future, while nuclear power continues to carry the same safety risks that led to its phasing out in the first place.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The United Nations General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly in favor of an independent scientific panel to report on the physical and societal consequences of nuclear war, the first such study in more than three decades.
The resolution’s backers say research into the catastrophic consequences of nuclear conflict needs to be urgently updated and expanded, especially at a time of heightened geopolitical tension and escalating nuclear rhetoric.
The legacy of nuclear testing is still being felt across the Pacific, notably in Micronesia but particularly in Marshall Islands, and also in French Polynesia. Fiji, Kiribati, Palau, Samoa and Tonga were all sponsors of the resolution, which was led by New Zealand and Ireland.
The world body’s First Committee on Disarmament on Friday approved the resolution sponsored by 20 nations, by a vote of 144 to 3, with 30 abstentions.
Only the nuclear-armed states of Russia, the United Kingdom and France were opposed, the United States, India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan abstained, while China supported the resolution.
Fiji’s permanent representative to the U.N. Filipo Tarakinikini said it was important people understood the “unprecedented devastation” of nuclear weapons.
“The generations that lived and know the reality of the Second World War are gone,” Tarakinikini told BenarNews, explaining why his country was an early supporter. “We need to awaken people of the world to the real horrors of a nuclear war.
“Such a clear picture of the extent of devastation in a nuclear war should sensitize people … and hopefully catalyze efforts towards the implementation of treaties against nuclear weapons.”
The U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly supported the resolution for a scientific study in the effects of nuclear war, on Nov. 1, 2024. The resolution called for the creation of an expert panel, consisting of 21 members, to examine the physical effects and societal consequences of a nuclear war at a local, regional and planetary scale. The panel will study the effects on the climate, environment, agriculture, public health and socioeconomic systems.
The last U.N. mandated study on the effects of nuclear war was published in 1988, with a focus on climate change. At the time of its release, France was the only power still testing in the Pacific and detonated a further 29 nuclear devices until 1996.
In September, a report delivered to the U.N. Human Rights Council laid out an array of ongoing challenges to human rights stemming from U.S. nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, a collection of 29 atolls and five isolated islands in the North Pacific Ocean.
The legacy of 67 detonations between 1946 to 1958 include obstacles to health, a clean and sustainable environment, adequate housing and indigenous rights. Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine said the testing had left behind “deep scars” in her country.
The Micronesian nation was elected last month to sit on the United Nations Human Rights Council from 2025, with climate change and nuclear justice as its top priorities.
Although it is accepted that hundreds of millions of people would die in an all-out nuclear war, scientists say the true toll on humanity and the environment is unclear because of gaps in research.
This year, the national science academies of the G7 countries issued a statement saying “in the context of the current global instability, it is imperative to highlight the known consequences of nuclear warfare.”
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the Doomsday Clock this year to 90 seconds to midnight – the hypothetical point of annihilation – due in large part to Russian threats to use nuclear weapons in its war against Ukraine.
While there are far fewer nuclear warheads today than at their peak in 1986, more countries have the weapons in their arsenal and local stockpiles are once again growing.
Nine countries – Russia, the United States, France, China, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea – possessed roughly 12,121 warheads as of early-2024, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
Nine Pacific island nations represented at the U.N. along with New Zealand and Australia ratified the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty – also known as Rarotonga Treaty – in 1986 to ban the use, testing and possession of nuclear weapons in the region. Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia and Palau have not signed but are eligible to join.
The final report of the U.N. panel will be delivered at the General Assembly’s eighty-second session in 2027.
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by BenarNews staff.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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North Korea has completed preparations to test an ICBM-class missile, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported on Wednesday, citing the South Korean military, with a launch possibly timed to coincide with next week’s U.S. presidential election.
North Korea has also completed “unspecified preparations” at its Punggye-ri nuclear test site, Yonhap reported the military as saying, raising the possibility of a seventh nuclear test compounding global concerns surrounding North Korea’s deployment of troops to help Russia fight its war against Ukraine.
North Korea’s suspected preparations for a missile and nuclear test were outlined to members of South Korea’s parliament in a briefing by the military’s Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, Yonhap reported.
“It appears that preparations are nearly complete for an ICBM-class long-range missile, including a space launch vehicle,” members of South Korea’s parliament said, citing the agency.
Preparations for a transporter erector launcher for the missile were complete and it had been deployed, though no missile had been mounted, they said, adding that the DIA said the ICBM test could come before or after the U.S. election on Nov. 5.
North Korea’s last ICBM test was in December when it fired its latest solid-fueled ICBM, the Hwasong-18.
There was no immediate elaboration on the expected nuclear test but South Korea said in September that North Korea may conduct its seventh nuclear test after the U.S. election.
North Korea has conducted six nuclear tests since 2006, all of them underground at the Punggye-ri site. Its last nuclear test was in 2017.
North Korea unveiled details of its uranium enrichment facility for the first time in September, with leader Kim Jong Un calling for increasing the number of centrifuges for uranium enrichment so it can build up its nuclear arsenal for self-defense.
South Korea says the North possesses about 70 kilograms of plutonium and a significant amount of highly enriched uranium, or HEU, enough to build dozens of nuclear weapons.
North Korea classifies itself a nuclear state but it has kept secret the number of nuclear weapons it has or deployed.
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Edited by Mike Firn
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Marshall Islands was elected on Wednesday to sit on the United Nations Human Rights Council, or HRC, from next year, with climate change and nuclear justice as its top priorities.
Currently there are no Pacific island nations represented on the 47-member peak U.N. human rights body.
Marshall Islands stood with the full backing of the Pacific Islands Forum, or PIF, and its 18 presidents and prime ministers.
The HRC’s mission is to promote and protect human rights and oversee U.N. processes including investigative mechanisms and to advise the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Addressing the General Assembly in September, Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine warned that “common multilateral progress is failing us in the hour of greatest need, perhaps most at risk are human rights.”
She said accountability must apply to all nations “without exception or double standard.”
“Our own unique legacy and complex challenges with nuclear testing impacts, with climate change, and other fundamental challenges, informs our perspective, that the voices of the most vulnerable must never be drowned out,” she said in New York on Sept. 25.
The Able U.S. nuclear test at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, pictured July 1, 1946. (U.S. National Archives) At the 57th session of the Human Rights Council two days later in Geneva, she made a specific plea, for it to recognize the impact of the nuclear legacy left by U.S. atomic tests in her country.
“Despite these wrongs, for almost 80 years, we have not received an official apology. There has been no meaningful reconciliation, and we continue to seek redress,” Heine said, as she pitched for a seat on the U.N. body.
“It is my sincere hope that this Council will continue to keep the human rights of the Marshallese people at heart, when considering the matters that we bring before it for consideration,” she said.
Sixty-seven nuclear weapon tests were conducted between 1946 and 1958 while the Marshall Islands were under U.N. Trusteeship and administered by the United States government.
“The Marshallese people were misled, forcibly displaced and subjected to scientific experimentation without their consent,” she told the council, adding that despite Marshallese requests to the U.N. for the tests to stop, they were allowed to continue.
Marshall Islands is considered extremely vulnerable to sea-level rise, cyclones, drought and other impacts of climate change, with a 2-degree Celsius increase to global temperatures above pre-industrial levels expected to make the low-lying atoll state’s existence tenuous.
Aerial view of a surge of unexpected waves swamping the island of Roi-Namur in the Marshall Islands, pictured Jan. 21, 2024. (Jessica Dambruc /U.S. Army Garrison-Kwajalein Atoll/AFP) In 2011, Marshall Islands along with Palau issued a pioneering call at the General Assembly to urgently seek an advisory opinion on climate change from the International Court of Justice on industrialized nations’ obligations to reduce carbon emissions.
While they were unsuccessful then, it laid the foundation for a resolution finally adopted in 2023, with the ICJ due to begin public hearings this December.
Heine has been highly critical of the wealthy nations who “break their pledges, as they double down on fossil fuels.”
“This failure of leadership must stop. No new coal mines, no new gas fields, no new oil wells,” she told the General Assembly.
When Marshall Islands takes up its council seat next year, it will be alongside Indonesia and France.
Both have been in Heine’s sights over the human and self-determination rights of the indigenous people of the Papuan provinces and New Caledonia respectively.
For years Indonesia has rebuffed a request from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for an independent fact-finding mission in Papua and ignored the Pacific Islands Forum’s calls since 2019 to allow it to go ahead.
“We support ongoing Forum engagement with Indonesia and West Papua, to better understand stakeholders, and to ensure human rights,” she told the General Assembly.
In May, deadly violence erupted in New Caledonia over a now abandoned French government proposal to dilute the Kanak vote, putting the success of any future independence referendum for the territory out of reach.
Heine said she “looks forward to the upcoming high-level visit” by PIF leaders to New Caledonia. No dates have been agreed.
President of the Republic of the Marshall Islands Hilda Heine addresses the 79th United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., Sept. 25, 2024. (Reuters/Eduardo Munoz) Countries elected to the council are expected to demonstrate their commitment to the U.N.’s human rights standards and mechanisms.
An analysis of Marshall Islands votes during its only previous term with the council in 2021 by Geneva-based think tank Universal Rights Group found it joined the consensus or voted in favor of almost all resolutions.
Exceptions include resolutions on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories where it “has generally voted against,” the report released ahead of the HRC election said.
As part of its bid to join the council, Marshall Islands committed to reviewing U.N. instruments it has not yet signed, including protocols on civil and political rights, abolition of the death penalty, torture and rights of children.
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Stefan Armbruster for BenarNews.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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North Korea would use nuclear weapons “without hesitation” if its territory was attacked by the United States and its ally South Korea, leader Kim Jong Un said, days after South Korea warned that North Korea’s regime would be finished it it tried to use its nuclear weapons.
Separately, the North Korean leader’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, denounced South Korea’s recent showcasing of new missiles, saying it only showed the “barrier of power inferiority” of non-nuclear states.
“If the enemy … attempt to use armed forces encroaching upon the sovereignty of the DPRK, full of excessive ‘confidence’ in the ROK-U.S. alliance in disregard of our repeated warnings, the DPRK would use without hesitation all the offensive forces it has possessed, including nuclear weapons,” said Kim Jong Un, as cited by the Korean Central news Agency, or KCNA, on Friday.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK, is North Korea’s official name, while the Republic of Korea, or ROK, is South Korea’s official name.
Kim Jong Un was speaking on Wednesday while inspecting a special forces military training base in the west of the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, according to KCNA.
The Hyunmoo, surface-to-surface missile, is showcased during a celebration to mark 76th anniversary of Korea Armed Forces Day, in Seongnam, South Korea, Oct. 1, 2024. (Kim Hong-Ji/Pool/Reuters) Kim said South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol was a “puppet.” who “bragged about overwhelming counteraction of military muscle at the doorstep of the state possessed of nuclear weapons and it was a great irony that caused the suspicion of being an abnormal man.”
“The DPRK has irreversibly secured the absolute strength as a nuclear power and the system and function for using it while overcoming the long-standing challenges,” Kim added.
Separately, Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, mocked South Korea’s Hyunmoo-5 missile, showcased on Tuesday at military parade in Seoul, as “worthless.”
The South unveiled the Hyunmoo-5 as Yoon issued his warning to the North about the end of its regime if it attempted to use nuclear weapons.
“If a man has a certain degree of common sense, he could not talk about the ‘end of regime’ of someone with a weapon of worthless large bulk,” Kim Yo Jong said in the statement, carried by KCNA on Thursday.
Kim Yo Jong, sister of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un attends wreath laying ceremony at Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi, Vietnam, March 2, 2019. (Jorge Silva/Pool/Reuters) Calling the South Korea’s showcasing of the missile, a “foolish act before the nuclear weapons state,” Kim Yo Jong said the South proved once again that they can “never cross the wall of inferiority in strength, the fate of a non-nuclear weapon state.”
“If it had not been opened to the public, the ‘mysterious ghost weapon’ would have been more effective in propaganda,” she added.
The Hyunmoo-5 is a centerpiece of the Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation plan, designed to respond to damage caused by a North Korean nuclear weapon by targeting its leadership and military headquarters in a retaliatory strike.
Dubbed the “monster missile,” reflecting a destructive capacity that South Korean media says is comparable to that of a nuclear weapon, the Hyunmoo-5 can carry a warhead weighing up to 9 tons and is capable of striking deeply buried command centers.
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During a Tuesday ceremony to mark the 76th founding anniversary of the South Korea’s armed forces, Yoon said if North Korea attempted to use nuclear weapons, it would face the resolute and overwhelming response of the South’s military and the South Korea-U.S. alliance.
“That day will be the end of the North Korean regime,” Yoon said.
The South Korean military would reportedly aim to use dozens of Hyunmoo-5s to destroy the North Korean military command’s underground bunkers and devastate Pyongyang in the event of an emergency.
“Our military will immediately retaliate against North Korea’s provocations based on its robust combat capabilities and solid readiness posture,” Yoon said.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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A Chinese nuclear submarine of the latest generation sank in late May or early June during construction at a shipyard in Wuhan province, U.S. media quoted defense officials as saying.
The Wall Street Journal first reported on the suspected sinking of the sub at Wuchang shipyard, which had been believed only to build conventional diesel-powered submarines for the Chinese military.
The newspaper said that the vessel that sank was the first of a new class of Chinese nuclear-powered submarines, called the Zhou class, which features a distinctive X-shaped stern. It was undergoing the final stage of construction when it sank.
The incident would indicate that the construction of nuclear submarines is moving to Wuchang from a previously known shipyard in Huludao, Liaoning province.
Open source investigators reported unusual movements and activities at the shipyard on the Yangtze River in early June, when floating cranes were seen working to supposedly salvage the sub.
Unidentified U.S. officials quoted by American media outlets said that China was trying to conceal the accident, which was a major setback for its submarine program.
‘No information’
It is unclear whether the submarine had nuclear fuel on board when it sank and there are no indications of nuclear rescue efforts in the area in the following months.
The Chinese embassy in Washington told news agencies that it “has no information to provide.”
Taiwan, which closely monitors Chinese military activity, said it was aware of the reports.
Defense Minister Wellington Koo said on Friday that authorities “have a grasp of the situation through multiple intelligence and surveillance methods,” the Reuters news agency reported, echoing words he used in June when Taiwanese media reported that a Chinese submarine had been spotted in the Taiwan Strait.
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China has the largest number of naval ships in the world – approximately 370 surface ships and submarines – according to the Pentagon’s 2023 China Military Power Report. Among them are six nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, six nuclear-powered attack submarines and 48 diesel-powered attack submarines.
China’s submarine force is expected to grow to 65 by 2025 and to 80 by 2035.
Cadets demonstrate flag signals during a media tour to an open day at the People’s Liberation Army Naval Submarine Academy in Qingdao, Shandong province, China, April 21, 2024. (Reuters/Florence Lo) The suspected sinking of the Zhou-class submarine has provoked questions among Chinese military watchers.
Some say that the waters of the Yangtze River around Wuhan, at a depth of less than 5 meters (16 feet), are too shallow for new nuclear submarines.
“We must, of course, accommodate the possibility of a mistaken intel,” said Collin Koh, a regional military expert.
“It’s more likely this episode will end like the earlier news about a Chinese nuclear boat having met a mishap in the Yellow Sea or Bohai Gulf,” Koh said, referring to reports of an accident on a Chinese Shang-class nuclear submarine in August last year.
British media at that time, citing leaked intelligence, said the Chinese attack submarine with hull number 417 was “caught in a trap intended to ensnare British sub-surface vessels in the Yellow Sea.”
This resulted in systems failures that took six hours to repair and surface the vessel, resulting in the deaths of 55 sailors, the Daily Mail and the Times said.
The Chinese military has never spoken about the incident and questions remain unanswered.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Staff.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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North Korea’s space agency spotted a U.S. nuclear-powered submarine in South Korea, the North Korean leader’s powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, said, in what would be the first confirmation that the North has a functioning spy satellite.
Kim said the arrival of the submarine in South Korea’s Busan port demonstrated what she said was an “insane” U.S. strategy to impose its superiority on the world.
“The Aerospace Reconnaissance Agency, an independent intelligence agency directly under the head of state of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, has reported that it detected an abnormal object at a pier in Busan Port, South Korea, on the 23rd,” said Kim on Tuesday, cited by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is North Korea’s official name.
“A nuclear submarine has appeared in the harbor where a U.S. aircraft carrier is moored,” said Kim. “This is a clear demonstration of the insane military-strategic prayer of the United States, which is preoccupied with deliberately demonstrating its ‘power superiority’ in the face of the world.”
The 7,800-ton USS Vermont submarine entered a major naval base in the South Korean city of Busan on Tuesday to replenish supplies and provide rest for crew members, South Korean media reported.
KCNA did not carry photographs supporting Kim’s assertion.
Kim Yo Jong, sister of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un attends wreath laying ceremony at Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi, Vietnam March 2, 2019. (Jorge Silva/Pool/Reuters) .
In November last year, North Korea successfully placed a spy satellite into orbit, and said it planned to launch three more such satellites in 2024. Its attempt to launch another satellite in May ended in failure.
In February, however, South Korea’s National Security Advisor Shin Won-sik, who was then defense minister, said that the North’s Malligyong-1 spy satellite appeared to be orbiting Earth without activity.
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Kim said the submarine’s arrival was “proof that the U.S. ambition to often take up nuclear strategic assets, boast of its strength, increase its threat to the rival and enjoy its hegemonic privilege.,”
She vowed to “continuously and limitlessly” bolster the country’s nuclear war deterrent against “U.S. threats.”
“The DPRK’s nuclear war deterrent to cope with and contain various threats from outside is bound to be bolstered up both in quality and quantity continuously and limitlessly as the security of the state is constantly exposed to the U.S. nuclear threat and blackmail,” she said.
“The U.S. strategic assets will never find their resting place in the region of the Korean peninsula,” Kim said, adding that such nuclear-powered submarines could never be an “object of fear.”
Quad summit
Separately, North Korea’s foreign ministry spokesperson criticized the U.S. for “violating” the North’s sovereign rights and trying to justify its hostile policy by hosting the Quad summit.
After holding the fourth in-person summit in Wilmington, Delaware, the leaders of the United States, India, Japan and Australia on Saturday denounced North Korea’s “destabilizing” missile launches and its nuclear program, and reaffirmed their commitment to the “complete” denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
“QUAD, the end product of the U.S. Cold War mentality and policy of inter-camp confrontation, has become a dangerous factor that deepens mistrust and antagonism between countries in the Asia-Pacific region and provokes international instability,” the spokesperson said in a statement carried by the KCNA on Wednesday.
The North will never tolerate any hostile acts that encroach upon its national sovereign rights, security and interests and continue to make efforts to build a multipolar international order, the spokesperson added.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.This post was originally published on Radio Free.