By Rachel Minyoung Lee, March 7, 2024
Never has there been such a long waiting period in the lead-up to a country’s nuclear test as North Korea’s seventh nuclear test. Leader Kim Jong-un set the stage by announcing at the Eighth Party Congress in January 2021 a wishlist of nuclear capabilities to be acquired over the next five years (KCNA 2021a). The expert community and governments then offered a string of assessments throughout 2022 on signs of Pyongyang’s preparations for a nuclear test, giving rise to suspense and speculation over when it might be conducted, for what purposes, and what its implications might be. And just like that, North Korea’s seventh nuclear test became a fait accompli—a matter of when, not if.
But the most interesting question about North Korea, however, is not what it will do or when it will do it, but why.
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Keywords: CTBT, China, Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, Nevada Test Site, North Korea, Russia, arms control, nuclear weapons tests
Topics: Nuclear Risk, Nuclear Weapons
