Kim Jong-un Reveals ‘Ultimate Goal’ of North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Research

North Korea (officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) has ramped up its nuclear-capable missile testing activity dramatically in recent months in response to a series of provocative military drills near its borders by South Korean and US forces.

The ultimate goal of the DPRK’s nuclear program is to create the most powerful nuclear deterrent on Earth, Kim Jong-un has revealed.

“Our great unremitting cause of building the nuclear force for reliably protecting the dignity and sovereignty of the state and the people through all ages is the greatest and most important revolutionary cause, and its ultimate goal is to possess the world’s most powerful strategic force, the absolute force unprecedented in this century,” Kim indicated in a letter to officials and scientists working in the country’s defense research sector.

Pointing to scientists’ success in the creation of the Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile, which he called “the world’s strongest strategic weapon,” and dramatic “leap forward in the development of technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles,” Kim said that Pyongyang had demonstrated “to the whole world the firm resolution, decisive executive ability, great potential and confident, ever-victorious future of our state advancing toward the goal of building the world’s strongest army.”

On behalf of the party and government, Kim thanked the officials, scientists and military staff who worked to build this “most powerful Juche-oriented strategic weapon of our own type” for their “boundless loyalty, patriotic devotion, extraordinary mental power and inexhaustible creativity.”

The message included special thanks to General Jan Chang-ha, a leading figure in the DPRK’s nuclear program, and Kim Jong-sik, deputy director of the party’s military machine-building department, and to dozens of other officials.

In turn, defense researchers congratulated Kim on the creation of the Hwasong-17, and thanked him for his “careful guidance” on the weapons system’s development. The missile system itself has been awarded the title of Hero of the DPRK, the Gold Start Medal and the Order of the National Flag 1st Class, with its successful test-firing hailed for demonstrating Pyongyang’s ability to respond to enemy aggression and showing the “mettle of socialist Korea” and its “absolute power to put an end to the imperialist tyranny on Earth.”

North Korea’s Nuclear Doctrine

First unveiled at a parade in 2020, the Hwasong-17 is a road mobile, two-stage ICBM system with an estimated operational range of at least 15,000 km – enough to hit any point in the continental United States, Asia, Australia and Europe.

North Korea officially declared itself a nuclear weapons power in September, with the text of its nuclear doctrine giving chairman Kim the sole authority to use nuclear weapons in response to nuclear or conventional aggression, and referencing the capability for nukes to be launched in “automatic” mode if an enemy first strike threatened the nation’s decision-making centers. The doctrine characterizes the country’s nuclear deterrent as a “powerful means for defending the sovereignty, territorial integrity and fundamental interests of the state,” and says Pyongyang’s nuclear status is aimed at “preventing a war in the Korean Peninsula and the Northeast Asian Region, and ensuring the strategic stability of the world.”

Kim Jong-un and his daughter attended a photo session on Sunday with officials and scientists responsible for the Hwasong-17’s development and the successful test on November 18.

North Korea began development work on long-range missiles and nuclear weapons in the late 1980s, after it became apparent that the country’s erstwhile ally, the USSR, was seeking rapprochement with the United States. Development accelerated in the 1990s, and ramped up further in the 2000s after the Bush administration listed the DPRK as a member of the ‘Axis of Evil’ alongside Iraq and Iran.