North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons: Will it Ever Use Them?

Photo Credit: NK NewsThis week 20 years ago the Agreed Framework between the United States and North Korea was signed, which suspended Pyongyang’s nuclear program in exchange for aid from Washington.

This deal, however, would collapse in the early part of the next decade, and North Korea has since conducted three nuclear tests, making them a de facto nuclear state despite a lack of international recognition. On the 20th anniversary of the Agreed Framework, experts on the North’s nuclear program thus see little reason to celebrate.

In part 4 of an NK News specialist opinion survey, a panel of North Korea watchers surveyed by NK News largely consider the North’s third nuclear test, conducted in early 2013 against the wishes of its long-time ally China, the most significant event on this front in recent years. There have also been, however, suspicious developments at the Yongbyon reactor – whose cooling tower was destroyed after an agreement with Washington in 2008, but whose activities were evidently relaunched in 2013 following an announcement from Pyongyang.

However, North Korea watchers are convinced that the odds of a nuclear attack by the rogue state against its antagonists – Seoul, Tokyo and Washington – remains unlikely even if the North develops the ability to do so. The risk, they said, remains in the potential for miscalculation given the North’s tense relationship with those states, particularly Seoul.