How North Korea's nuclear program went from threats to reality

Wednesday's test comes just weeks after Pyongyang said that it had added a hydrogen bomb to its arsenal, though at the time experts cast great doubt on the truth of the claim.

Experts previously estimated that the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), as the country is also known, may have as many as many as a dozen nuclear weapons already, and was developing more.

According to a recent report by the U.S.-Korea Institute at SAIS, "by 2020, the North could have anywhere from 20 to 100 nuclear weapons," capable of hitting Japan and South Korea and even the U.S.

So how did we get here?

Trading weapons for relations

"The traditional view was that what the North Koreans really wanted was legitimacy for their regime and would be willing to trade nuclear weapons for better relations," says Jeffrey Lewis, Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.

"During the 1990s and early 2000s, [North Korea] was willing to trade away significant elements of its nuclear program for various concessions at different times," writes Shane Smith, a senior research fellow at the U.S. National Defense University, in a report on Pyongyang's changing nuclear strategy.

"However, those days appear to be gone for the foreseeable future."

Under leader Kim Jong Il, at times the North accepted inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency; took part in Six-Party Talks with the U.S., China, South Korea, Japan and Russia; and even agreed to roll-back parts of its nuclear program in return for the lifting of economic sanctions.

Kim Jong Un's regime however, has behaved entirely differently to that of his father's. The younger Kim inherited a program that had already conducted two apparently successful nuclear tests, and would go on to carry out a third.

Analysts agree that the Kim regime may already have around a dozen nuclear warheads, and according to Chinese nuclear experts, that number may be as high as 20.

This has led to an altogether more bullish Pyongyang. One that, according to a foreign ministry spokesman, views its nuclear program as an "essential means to protect its sovereignty and vital rights."

If even low estimations of nuclear weapons capability are correct, North Korea will have essentially leapfrogged the demands of the Six-Party Talks, perhaps meaning that the entire program of the discussions will have to be thrown out, if and when they restart.

"If [assessments are correct], then the plutonium program that the U.S. and members of the Six-Party talks had been negotiating over this past quarter century would suddenly seem trivial," according to Victor Cha, Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"The old idea that they would give everything up and join the family of nations is done," said Lewis.

 

(CNN)