NORTH KOREA NUCLEAR PROGRAM — MILITARY ASSESSMENT (opens in new tab)

The foundational fact from which all else follows: Kim Jong-un views nuclear weapons as a “guarantor of regime security” and has “no intention” to renounce them, per the U.S. intelligence community’s 2025 Annual Threat Assessment. This is not posturing. It is codified policy. North Korea changed its constitution in May 2012 to describe itself as a “nuclear-armed state.” Denuclearization is a dead word in Pyongyang’s lexicon.