North Korea’s interest in nuclear weapons was decades in the making—but its first earnest attempt during the 1990s was stymied by external factors.

On October 9, 2006, North Korea conducted its first nuclear weapons test. The explosion occurred underground, in a mine shaft at Punggye-ri, a mountainous test site in northeastern North Korea. The test marked the culmination of a decades-long effort to acquire nuclear weapons, and made North Korea the ninth and most recent nuclear-armed state—and the first to conduct a live nuclear explosive test since Pakistan in 1998.

The international community condemned the test, and the United Nations issued sanctions. For a time, the international community prevailed on North Korea to restore the “denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula—offering it an implicit bargain in which the United States would agree to keep nuclear weapons out of South Korea if it abandoned its nuclear program. Twenty years later, however, it is clear that Pyongyang’s nukes are here to stay. In the two decades since the first test, North Korea’s nuclear program has advanced in all directions; it now has an arsenal and missiles capable of threatening the United States. Even more remarkably, it managed to build the advanced program in near-total international isolation, even as it struggled to maintain basic living standards for its population of around 25 million.

North Korea’s Longstanding Nuclear Ambitions

North Korea’s nuclear ambitions can be traced back to the Korean War, when the Korean Peninsula was devastated, and Pyongyang’s fear of American military power was understandably exacerbated. The United States considered deploying nuclear weapons during that conflict—with President Harry Truman controversially firing General Douglas MacArthur after he refused to abandon the idea—-and would station nuclear weapons in South Korea in 1958, giving North Korea a rational concern and a rational reason for wanting nuclear weapons of its own.

The inception of North Korea’s nuclear program began in the 1950s, when the Soviet Union helped Pyongyang establish a civilian nuclear research program. The early program focused on research and technical expertise rather than developing weapons. But over time, North Korea developed the domestic capabilities necessary to produce weapons-grade nuclear material. Soviet assistance gave North Korea a start, but Moscow refused to help it develop a weapons program; it secured the necessary know-how from its own personnel over time.

During the 1970s and 1980s, North Korea made substantial progress on nuclear affairs, expanding a nuclear complex at Yongbyon and installing a 5-megawatt-electric graphite-moderated reactor, which began operating in 1986. The reactor could produce plutonium in spent nuclear fuel, which could then be chemically separated and used in nuclear weapons. North Korea also developed reprocessing infrastructure, which in sum created a pathway for the production of nuclear explosive material. And while North Korea joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1985, disputes arose over UN inspections—and the international organization began to suspect the North Koreans of undeclared nuclear activities.

The crisis came to a head in 1993, when North Korea denied international inspections and announced its withdrawal from the NPT—prompting the Clinton administration to consider military options. The crisis was defused through the US–North Korea Agreed Framework, under which North Korea would suspend its NPT withdrawal and freeze its graphite-moderated reactor program. Domestic factors as well as international ones led Pyongyang to concede on the nuclear issue; from 1994 onward, a combination of natural disasters, economic mismanagement, and the suspension of aid from the former Soviet Union led to a massive famine in North Korea, killing at least hundreds of thousands of North Koreans and leading the government to seek sanctions relief. For the remainder of the decade, both sides would pursue normalization and eventual dismantlement steps.

In 2006, North Korea Got the Bomb—and Hasn’t Looked Back

But eventually North Korea expelled international inspectors and restarted nuclear facilities. In 2003, Pyongyang announced its withdrawal from the NPT, and proved unwilling to resume the talks that had secured its return in the 1990s. North Korea achieved its nuclear breakthrough on October 9, 2006. Seismic monitoring confirmed an underground explosion, which was consistent with North Korean claims of a successful test. The estimated yield was small, at around one kiloton, but the threshold crossed was significant.

The UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1718, imposing sanctions. But North Korea was on its way to a relatively robust weapons program. Twenty years later, North Korea has conducted five more nuclear tests (the most recent in 2017), developed more powerful warheads, and more sophisticated ballistic missiles. Today, North Korea is a bona fide nuclear-armed state with an arsenal size thought to number in the hundreds.

About the Author: Harrison Kass

Harrison Kass is a writer and attorney focused on national security, technology, and political culture. His work has appeared in Tablet, City Journal, The Hill, The Spectator, and The Cipher Brief. He holds a JD from the University of Oregon and a master’s in Global & Joint Program Studies from NYU. More at harrisonkass.com.

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