North Korea is girding itself for war, and continuing with the current policy of strategic deterrence will put the U.S. and its allies on collision course with the isolated regime in the coming years, experts warn in a new report.
North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un "has made a strategic decision to go to war," according to researchers at 38 North, part of foreign affairs think tank the Stimson Center. In a January 11 report the North Korea-focused analysis group said the situation on the Korean Peninsula is now more dangerous than it has been at any point since the Korean War.
Inter-Korean relations continue to deteriorate, strained by reciprocal launches of surveillance satellites, North Korea's steadily progressing nuclear and ballistic missile programs, joint U.S.-Japan-South Korea military drills, and the abandonment of a key North-South military agreement reached in 2018 to lessen the risk of hostilities.
North Korea on Monday announced it had test-fired a solid-fuel missile tipped with—in a first for the nuclear-armed state—a hypersonic warhead, drawing condemnation from Washington, Seoul and Tokyo. In a trilateral call they said this had "violated multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions" and vowed to step up joint-security to defend against the North Korean threat, per a U.S. State Department media note.
