- Oct 17, 2011
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In a secret letter to President Trump in December 2018, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un likened the two leaders’ budding friendship to a Hollywood romance. Future meetings with “Your Excellency,” Kim wrote to Trump, would be “reminiscent of a scene from a fantasy film.”
Yet even as he penned the words, Kim was busy creating an illusion of a different kind. At six of the country’s missile bases, trucks hauled rock from underground construction sites as workers dug a maze of new tunnels and bunkers, allowing North Korea to move weapons around like peas in a shell game. Southeast of the capital, meanwhile, new buildings sprouted across an industrial complex that was processing uranium for as many as 15 new bombs, according to current and former U.S. and South Korean officials, as well as a report by a United Nations panel of experts.
The new work reflects a continuation of a pattern observed by analysts since the first summit between Trump and Kim in 2018. While North Korea has refrained from carrying out provocative tests of its most advanced weapon systems, it never stopped working on them, U.S. intelligence officials said. Indeed, new evidence suggests that Kim took advantage of the lull by improving his ability to hide his most powerful weapons and shield them from future attacks.
“North Korea hasn’t stopped building nuclear weapons or developing missile systems; they’ve just stopped displaying them,” said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. “They stopped doing the things that made bad news cycles for Trump.”
Trump basked in the media spotlight when he crossed the Korean demilitarized zone to shake hands with Kim, but the author of “The Art of the Deal” could not persuade Kim to open his weapon bunkers for inspection, or to part with his nuclear weapons, estimated by U.S. intelligence officials at between 40 and 60. Those officials concluded that Kim never intended to give up his arsenal, which the dictator views as the ultimate guarantor of his regime’s survival.
Kim has 50 nukes, but at least we have the photo op and the commemorative coins.
In a secret letter to President Trump in December 2018, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un likened the two leaders’ budding friendship to a Hollywood romance. Future meetings with “Your Excellency,” Kim wrote to Trump, would be “reminiscent of a scene from a fantasy film.”
Yet even as he penned the words, Kim was busy creating an illusion of a different kind. At six of the country’s missile bases, trucks hauled rock from underground construction sites as workers dug a maze of new tunnels and bunkers, allowing North Korea to move weapons around like peas in a shell game. Southeast of the capital, meanwhile, new buildings sprouted across an industrial complex that was processing uranium for as many as 15 new bombs, according to current and former U.S. and South Korean officials, as well as a report by a United Nations panel of experts.
The new work reflects a continuation of a pattern observed by analysts since the first summit between Trump and Kim in 2018. While North Korea has refrained from carrying out provocative tests of its most advanced weapon systems, it never stopped working on them, U.S. intelligence officials said. Indeed, new evidence suggests that Kim took advantage of the lull by improving his ability to hide his most powerful weapons and shield them from future attacks.
“North Korea hasn’t stopped building nuclear weapons or developing missile systems; they’ve just stopped displaying them,” said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif. “They stopped doing the things that made bad news cycles for Trump.”
Trump basked in the media spotlight when he crossed the Korean demilitarized zone to shake hands with Kim, but the author of “The Art of the Deal” could not persuade Kim to open his weapon bunkers for inspection, or to part with his nuclear weapons, estimated by U.S. intelligence officials at between 40 and 60. Those officials concluded that Kim never intended to give up his arsenal, which the dictator views as the ultimate guarantor of his regime’s survival.
Kim has 50 nukes, but at least we have the photo op and the commemorative coins.
