Updated May 2024 Since North Korea carried out its first nuclear weapon test in 2003, it has been the target of multiple sanctions regimes in an attempt to discourage its nuclear development. The UN and the United States, as well as the European Union, Japan, South Korea, and Australia, have sanctioned North Korea over the […]
Finding windows for cooperation amid rising nuclear threats
By Anna Kim Last Tuesday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister Kim Yo-jong threatened “dreadful attack” and “a miserable fate little short of destruction and ruin” for South Korea, warning that if the country “opts for military confrontation with us, our nuclear combat force will have to inevitably carry out its duty.” The comments were […]
North Korea is testing hypersonic weapons. Should the West be worried?
Executive Director John Tierney was quoted in an NPR article about North Korea’s recent flurry of missile tests. John Tierney, a former Massachusetts representative who now serves as the executive director for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, calls hypersonics “shrug worthy,” adopting a term coined by writer Fred Kaplan in a column in Slate last year […]
World Nuclear Inventories
Updated June 2025 There are nine nuclear-armed countries worldwide with about 12,000 nuclear weapons between them. The United States and Russia together have more than 90 percent of those weapons.
Fact Sheet: North Korea’s Nuclear Inventory
Updated September 2022 North Korea’s nuclear weapons program has existed for decades in a self-described attempt to protect the regime from security threats posed by adversaries and proxies. Bilateral efforts between the United States and the DPRK under the Agreed Framework ultimately failed, and in 2003, North Korea officially withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). […]
