We keep pretending North Korea’s nukes are a plot twist that diplomacy can edit out. But, they are the spine of Pyongyang’s security strategy, paid for in sanctions, built in tunnels, and rehearsed in midnight drills. While leaders trade statements and the press argues over talking points, technicians in Pyongyang finish night shifts, trucks roll in and out of camouflaged sheds, and another missile crew practices the same drill it dreams to once put into action. The program is not a bargaining chip, a joke or a headline. It’s a system that now runs on habit and a threat that should not be underestimated.

We have spent years laughing at Kim Jong Un’s haircut and photo ops, as if ridicule could shrink a warhead. Meanwhile, North Korea turned repetition into muscle memory: pre-dawn launch crews cycling through checklists, solid-fuel canisters swapping in for tanker trucks, rail cars and road mobiles slipping out of tunnels for another “drill” that looks exactly like the real thing. The spectacle we mock is only the surface of a system that now runs on routine.

Japan learned that the hard way. More than once, people in Hokkaido and Aomori woke to J-Alert sirens and phone vibrations, told to take cover as a North Korean missile arched overhead toward the Pacific. Convenience stores pulled down their shutters, morning trains paused, classrooms moved children away from windows, and the abstract debate about deterrence became a very local question about where to stand. Those alerts were the downstream effect of years of North Korean exercises: salvos of short-range ballistic missiles aimed at airfields and ports, submarine and rail launches to complicate tracking, long-range tests that prove reach, and, most ominously, solid-fuel ICBM drills that cut warning time to a sliver.

The joke, in other words, is on us. While late-night talk show teams wrote punchlines, Pyongyang rehearsed concealing intent, firing under pressure, and maintaining options after the initial shot.  The discovery of a secret ICBM base is significant for this reason.

Situated in North Pyongan Province, just a short drive from the Chinese border, the Sinpung-dong location is not a trophy facility for satellite imagery. Intercontinental missiles and their launchers are kept in readiness to move, conceal, and fire from locations not on anyone’s briefing slide thanks to this operational hub. Analysts say the garrison could field a brigade’s worth of missiles, likely a mix that includes solid-fuel systems, with shelters, tunnels, and support buildings arranged for quick dispersal. In a crisis, those launchers would not wait for ceremony. They would roll to pre-planned firing points, use shortened timelines, and complicate every calculation in Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul.

The base is also situated at a point where geography can meet strategy. Why? Because the cost of any preemptive strike is increased by placing an ICBM unit so close to China, and capitals that are afraid of making a mistake with a nuclear-armed neighbor are hesitant. It serves as both a concrete and a political shield. This closeness contributes to the explanation of Pyongyang’s preference for mobility and cover over opulent fixed pads. Impressing is not the aim here. The aim, for North Korea is to survive long enough to matter.

Sinpung-dong fits into a broader pattern that was unaffected by earlier diplomacy. Negotiations focused for years on conspicuous features, such as satellite launch locations, while the force’s true core quietly dispersed throughout the nation. North Korea was able to halt testing without stopping the program thanks to a network of unreported operating bases, storage depots, maintenance yards, and possibly warhead locations. The world must focus on that lattice if it hopes to achieve a different result from the upcoming round of negotiations. This entails inventories, site-specific restrictions, meaningfully intrusive inspection rights, and verification that focuses on the everyday equipment rather than the picturesque vistas.

Any discussion of defense and preemption should also be tempered by the discovery. Regional shields that are layered can protect vital assets and thin a salvo. They are unable to provide a clean sheet against mobile, solid-fuel systems that are launched from fields and roads outside of a known base’s perimeter. That reality was hinted at by Japan’s early-morning alerts. The homeland defenses of the United States are being upgraded, but even a limited leak risk alters strategy, and Pyongyang is betting that a small chance of penetration deters bold moves against it.

So, is North Korea’s nuclear arsenal real, ready and getting harder to stop?

Pyongyang’s pursuit of the bomb dates to the Cold War, when it built a plutonium pathway at Yongbyon and learned the rhythms of coercive diplomacy: escalate, negotiate, secure concessions, and regroup. The 1994 Agreed Framework briefly froze key activities, but the program adapted. When the Six-Party Talks foundered, North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in 2006 and then moved through a faster cycle of demonstration and sanctions. What began as a rudimentary capability matured across a decade of underground detonations and missile campaigns that showcased increasing range and payload ambition.

The program now rests on two pillars: warheads and delivery systems. Public estimates vary widely, but most assessments agree North Korea has produced enough fissile material for dozens of warheads, with production continuing. The precise number matters less than the trend line. Pyongyang has repeatedly demonstrated designs for both plutonium and highly enriched uranium devices, and it has tested thermonuclear configurations to boost yield. Alongside that, it has diversified delivery platforms. Early reliance on liquid-fuel rockets with conspicuous fueling operations gave adversaries time to watch and, in theory, to preempt. The shift to road-mobile systems and solid-fuel motors shortens that warning window dramatically.

On the long-range side, the Hwasong-15 and larger follow-on models proved that North Korea could build intercontinental ballistic missiles capable, at least on paper, of reaching most of the continental United States. More recently, the unveiling and testing of solid-fuel ICBMs signaled a determined move toward survivability and rapid launch. Regionally, the portfolio is even denser: short- and medium-range ballistic missiles that can be fired from trucks, trains, and coastal launch sites; maneuvering reentry vehicles designed to stress missile defenses; land-attack cruise missiles advertised for nuclear roles; and a suite of “tactical” systems intended to threaten ports, airbases, and logistics hubs in South Korea and Japan. Pyongyang has also showcased submarine-launched missiles and frequently promises new sea-based capabilities, a path that, if realized at scale, would complicate allied tracking and targeting.

Hardware alone does not define a nuclear posture. I would say, it’s doctrine and command that manage to turn metal into strategy. In 2022, North Korea codified a nuclear law that lowers the declared threshold for use under several conditions, including attacks on leadership or key military targets and scenarios in which it claims conventional defeat would jeopardize regime survival. The message is blunt: nuclear weapons are not a distant last resort, but rather integrated into a layered plan to deter, to compel, and, if necessary, to break an adversary’s campaign. That is why Pyongyang talks so often about “tactical” nuclear options. 

This posture exploits three vulnerabilities in the security environment. The first is crisis instability. When a state can rapidly launch from concealed locations with solid-fuel missiles, the other side faces pressure to strike first if a war looks imminent. The second is entanglement: North Korea co-locates parts of its conventional and nuclear infrastructure, uses dual-capable missiles, and disperses command functions. Targeting one can be read as an attack on the other. The third is political fragmentation among its adversaries. Pyongyang sees gaps between Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington over costs, over risk tolerance, over strategy, and tailors threats to widen those seams.

Missile defenses, though improving, cannot erase these dynamics. The United States and its allies have layered systems at sea and on land that can thin out salvos and defend specific assets. They can raise the cost of an initial strike and complicate planning in Pyongyang. They cannot promise impregnable shields against a mixed attack of ballistic and cruise missiles, decoys, and maneuvering vehicles. North Korea is betting that saturation, mobility, and deception will outpace interception, and that even a modest probability of penetration will deter preemption.

None of this means the diplomatic file is closed. It does mean the terms have changed. Past negotiations often focused on the most visible symbols of the program: test moratoria, launch pads, satellite facilities etc. All, while leaving the everyday machinery of deterrence largely intact: the operating bases, the tunnels and garages, the mobile launchers, the warhead storage sites, the logistics chains. The result is that North Korea can pause a headline test without pausing the quiet work that matters most. Any future deal that is more than a press release will have to inventory the network that keeps the force usable and put verifiable constraints on pieces of it. That is hard, invasive work. It is also the only kind that bends capability, not just optics.

There are policy consequences for allies as well. Extended deterrence (i.e. America’s commitment to defend South Korea and Japan) demands visible planning for nuclear contingencies, frequent exercises that include nuclear consultation, resilient command-and-control links, and credible options for proportionate response. In parallel, conventional force posture must make it harder for North Korea to achieve quick gains: better dispersal and hardening of airfields, prepositioned stocks, integrated air and missile defense, and rapid-repair capacity to keep ports and runways functioning under fire. All of these reduce the chance that Pyongyang concludes it can coerce with a limited nuclear threat.

The sanctions question is trickier. North Korea has adapted to pressure through smuggling networks, cybertheft, and deeper barter relationships with sympathetic partners.  Sanctions still impose costs and signal international norms, but they are unlikely, on their own, to reverse a program now embedded in national strategy. That argues for a dual approach: sustained pressure against the networks that feed the arsenal, and realistic diplomacy that seeks bounded objectives rather than maximalist disarmament in a single leap.

The risk of proliferation beyond North Korea’s borders should not be dismissed. As its own stockpiles and expertise grow, the temptation to trade components, designs, or training for cash, fuel, or technology may grow with it, especially under stress. Preventing that kind of leakage should be near the top of any practical agenda.

Though voices claim “you cannot negociate with Kim Jon”, the history of nuclear rivalry shows that dangerous adversaries can still reach stabilizing arrangements: hotlines, notifications, no-go rules around certain targets, and sequencing that links steps on one side to tangible benefits on the other. The aim is not to trust North Korea, but to build a structure in which mistrust is managed by procedures, verification, and the steady reduction of miscalculation.

North Korea’s arsenal is the product of decades of engineering and a clear, if ruthless, logic of regime survival. It will not vanish because outsiders wish it away. But it can be bounded, better understood, and deterred. That requires clear-eyed policy that treats the program as it is, not as it was a decade ago, and a coalition that can match North Korea’s patience with its own.

By I. Constantin