Chilling North Korea nuclear warning as Kim Jong Un’s arsenal ‘shifting fairly quick’
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general Rafael Grossi warned that North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme is moving quickly and poses a growing threat to global stability
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspecting a combustion test of a solid-fuel rocket engine (file image)(Image: KCNA VIA KNS/AFP via Getty Images)
North Korea’s clandestine nuclear weapons programme is “moving quite fast”, the chief of the United Nations’ atomic watchdog has cautioned.
Rafael Grossi warned that North Korea presents an escalating threat to global stability as it expands its nuclear stockpile. He voiced frustration that the UN lacks proper visibility into the status of the nation’s nuclear weapons programme, which has progressed swiftly in recent years despite enduring international sanctions.
In an interview with The Telegraph published this week, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency cautioned that the world risks a fresh nuclear arms race, with the expanding nuclear programmes of North Korea and China becoming an increasing source of alarm.
Grossi told the publication: “I think it’s fair to say that we see North Korea as a clear expansion. What we see is that the country is moving quite fast in this area and as you know, although this is not nuclear, but it is intrinsically related, you have a very ambitious ballistic missile programme.”
The nation’s state-controlled Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) announced in February that under Kim Jong Un’s leadership the country “radically improved” its “war deterrence”, “with the nuclear forces as its pivot”, reports the Mirror.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimated last year that North Korea possessed around 50 nuclear warheads and had enough material to produce up to 40 more. The nation routinely trials prohibited intercontinental ballistic missiles, and announced it test-fired ballistic missiles equipped with cluster bomb warheads on Sunday in the second such trial this month.
The KCNA report seemed to reference multiple launches spotted on Sunday off North Korea’s eastern coastline by South Korea, Japan and the United States.
KCNA photographs depicted North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his teenage daughter, both donning black leather jackets, observing from a coastal vantage point as a projectile flew over the waters, leaving grey smoke in its wake. South Korea’s intelligence agency recently concluded that the daughter, allegedly named Kim Ju Ae, might be regarded as Kim’s successor.
Kim supervised the firing of five enhanced surface-to-surface Hwasong-11 Ra ballistic missiles fitted with cluster bomb warheads and fragmentation mine warheads, KCNA reported.
The missiles hit an island target and Kim voiced approval over the launches, declaring “It is of weighty significance in military actions to boost the high-density striking capability,” according to the outlet.
Over 120 nations have endorsed an international agreement prohibiting the deployment of cluster munitions, but North Korea, Iran, Israel and the US are not amongst them.
Meanwhile, 191 nations have put pen to paper on the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), with key signatories including the five acknowledged nuclear-weapon states – the US, Russia, the UK, France, and China. According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, of the world’s over 12,300 nuclear warheads, Russia possesses 5459, the US has 5277 and the UK holds 225.
The NPT does not extend to the nuclear-armed countries of India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea.
