Seoul:
North Korea continued its missile program in 2022 and took steps to resume nuclear bomb testing as world events, including the COVID pandemic and war, broke the already weak international pressure against it.
The country acknowledged its first COVID-19 outbreak in May, extending already strict border closures and other anti-pandemic measures, blocking international involvement and causing economic hardship, but doing little to slow weapons testing.
The true extent of COVID there remains unconfirmed in the absence of testing and independent monitoring.
This year provided the clearest evidence yet that North Korea now considers itself a permanent nuclear weapon power and that Pyongyang has no plans to involve the United States in denuclearization talks, said Evans Revere, a former US diplomat.
“We are in dangerous and unfamiliar territory when it comes to the North Korean threat,” he said. “The possibility of denuclearizing North Korea has all but disappeared.”
North Korea resumed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) testing for the first time since 2017 and successfully launched the massive new Hwasong-17, believed to have the range to strike anywhere in the United States.
Pyongyang also rolled out a series of increasingly capable short-range missiles, in what it says is a strategy to deploy tactical nuclear weapons.
North Korea also prepared to reopen its closed nuclear test site, pledging a new nuclear bomb test for the first time since 2017.
With the world distracted by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, and increasing competition between Washington and Beijing, the tests appear to be poised to make real progress in strengthening the country’s military might, analysts said.
“North Korea could have at least pretended to be open to dialogue, but it hasn’t,” said Ramon Pacheco Pardo, a Korea expert at King’s College London. “I think the Kim regime just wants to improve its capabilities, regardless of the consequences.”
WHY IT MATTER
North Korea has been banned from conducting nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches for years by the United Nations Security Council, which had tightened sanctions against Pyongyang.
In May, however, China and Russia vetoed a US-led effort to impose more UN sanctions on North Korea, publicly dividing the council for the first time since it began sanctioning Pyongyang in 2006.
The United States and its allies in South Korea and Japan have since resorted to displays of military force, including joint exercises and the deployment of US aircraft carriers and long-range bombers, in a hitherto unsuccessful attempt to deter Pyongyang’s tests. .
North Korea’s missile tests have made it possible to fine-tune and in some cases deploy operationally new capabilities that enable the rapid and first use of nuclear weapons in the event of both conventional and nuclear strikes, Duyeon Kim said in the statement. US-based Center for a New American Security.
“Tactical nuclear weapons are dangerous because they can start a war whether through miscalculation, retaliation or prevention, and the threshold for using nuclear weapons would be even lower,” she said.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR 2023?
As North Korea reopens to trade and travel, it will likely continue to side with China and Russia and be less concerned about involvement with the United States and South Korea, Pacheco Pardo said.
If it is true that Pyongyang expects the pandemic to last until 2024, then there could be continued tensions next year.
“Perhaps we will see more weapons tests, chest-thumping postures and threats until the virus feels safe to return to negotiations and is easily armed with even more political clout to force major concessions or indefinite recognition as a nuclear power,” Duyeon said. Kim.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)
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