North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs: Foreign absorption and domestic innovation

ABSTRACT

North Korea’s strategic weapons innovation system is exemplary of an authoritarian mobilization model. The top leadership prioritizes the program and mobilizes the country’s science, technology, and heavy industrial resources around key programs. Key to success are investments in a defense industrial infrastructure that runs from basic research and development to applied R&D, product development, and linked production capability. Although foreign borrowing is important, the country’s nuclear and missile programs would not have gelled in the absence of complementary domestic investments.

KEYWORDS:

• North Korea
• defense innovation
• weapons
• international relations
• technology

Acknowledgement

The authors wish to acknowledge the invaluable research assistance from Taseul Joo, who compiled key data sources and conducted extensive reviews of Korean language sources and Daniel Pinkston for detailed comments on earlier drafts.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Joseph Bermudez, ‘Overview of North Korea’s NBC Infrastructure’, US-Korea Institute, June (Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies 2017), p. 14, Figure 2.

² Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, Hard Target: Sanctions, Inducements and the Case of North Korea (Stanford: Stanford University Press 2017).

³ Bermudez, Overview of North Korea’s NBC Infrastructure.

⁴ ‘North Korean “Missile Researcher” Lays Bare Missile Development by the North Korean Military,’ Shindong-A, 9 (March 2015).

⁵ ‘Report of Plenary Meeting of WPK Central Committee, ‘KCNA 31 March 2013 and ‘Seventh Session of the 12^th SPA of DPRK Held’, 1 April 2013 and on nuclear weapons in particular: ‘Law on Consolidating Position of Nuclear Weapons State Adopted’, KCNA 1 April 2013 and particularly ‘Nuke and Peace 1ʹ and ‘Nuke and Peace 2’, KCNA 26 and 27 April 2013.

⁶ Suk Lee, ed, The DPRK Economic Outlook: 2016 (Seoul: Korea Development Institute 2017), 131–132.

⁷ Conventional weapons sites include munitions factories, military research centers, artillery factories, ammunition factories, military-related universities, some precision machinery factories, KPA unit factories, and machine plants inter alia. Strategic weapons sites include a group of munitions factories rocket test facilities, chemical weapons factory/ research centers, strategic rocket forces sites, aerospace facilities, the National Defense university, bio-chemistry research centers, the State Academy of Science, Hamhung Research Center and related facilities.Figure 4

⁸ Valery I. Denisov, ‘Nuclear Institutions and Organizations in North Korea’, in James Clay Moltz and Alexandre Mansourov (eds.), The North Korean Nuclear Program: Security, Strategy, and New Perspectives from Russia (New York: Routledge 2000), 22.

⁹ Yoseff Bodansky, Crisis in Korea (New York: Spi Books 1994), 113.

¹⁰ Peter Hayes, Pacific Powderkeg: American Nuclear Dilemmas in Korea (Lexington: Lexington Books 1991), 3–16.

¹¹ Michael J. Mazaar, North Korea and the Bomb: A Case Study in Nonproliferation (New York: St. Martins 1995), 15–21.

¹² Roger Dingman, ‘Atomic Diplomacy during the Korean War’, International Security, 13/3 (Winter, 1988–89), 50–91.

¹³ Balazs Szalontai and Sergey Radchenko, ‘North Korea’s Efforts to Acquire Nuclear Technology and Nuclear Weapons: Evidence from Russian and Hungarian Archives’, Cold War Internationial History Project, Working Paper #53, Aug. 2006, 24.

¹⁴ Szalontai and Radchenko, ‘North Korea’s Efforts to Acquire Nuclear Technology and Nuclear Weapons’.

¹⁵ Walter Clemens, ‘North Korea’s Quest for Nuclear Weapons: New Historical Evidence’, Journal of East Asian Studies 10 (April 2010), 127–54.

¹⁶ See Protocol No. 61 of a meeting of the special committee under the Council of Ministers of the USSR (excerpt). Wilson Center Digital Archive at http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110597.

¹⁷ For example, the North Koreans reportedly communicated the interest in mining uranium and extracting large amounts of it to the Soviet ambassador Vasily Moskovsky in September 1963 (Clemens 2010, 129).

¹⁸ Edward Yoon, ‘Status and Future of the North Korean Minerals Sector’, Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability (January 2011).

¹⁹ Kim-Chaek Engineering University, Chongjin Mining and Metal University, the University of the Chemical Industry, Sariwon Geology University and the Yongbyon nuclear technical college described in more detail below.

²⁰ International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), North Korea’s Weapons Programmes: A Net Assessment, (London: 2004), 33–34.

²¹ This facility was subsequently converted to the enrichment operation that was revealed in 2010 to a visiting group of American scientists (Hecker 2010).

²² International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 2011, 7. Andrea Berger, ‘What Lies Beneath: North Korean Uranium Deposits,’ NKNews, Aug. 28 2014. https://www.nknews.org/2014/08/what-lies-beneath-north-koreas-uranium-deposits/ and Jeffrey Lewis, ‘Recent Imagery Suggests Increased Uranium Production,’ 38North, Aug. 12 2015. http://www.38north.org/2015/08/jlewis081215/.

²³ Nick Hansen, ‘Major Development: Reactor Fuel Fabrication Facilities Identified at Yongbyon Nuclear Complex,’ 38North, Dec. 23 2013. at http://www.38north.org/2013/12/yongbyon122313/#_ftn2/.

²⁴ Kang Ho Je (강호제), History of Science and Technology in North Korea (북한과학기술형성사) (Seoul: Son In (선인) 2007).

²⁵ Joseph Bermudez, ‘Exposing North Korea’s Secret Nuclear Infrastructure I’, Jane’s Intelligence Review, July 1999.

²⁶ Alexander Zhebin, ‘A Political History of Soviet-North Korean Nuclear Cooperation’, in James Clay Moltz and Alexandre Mansourov (eds.), The North Korean Nuclear Program: Security, Strategy, and New Perspectives from Russia (New York: Routledge 2000), 29.

²⁷ Szalontai and Radchenko, ‘North Korea’s Efforts to Acquire Nuclear Technology and Nuclear Weapons’, 27–30. Clemens, ‘North Korea’s Quest for Nuclear Weapons’, 130.

²⁸ Bermudez, ‘Exposing North Korea’s Secret Nuclear Infrastructure I’. Bill Streifer and Sang S. Nam. 2012. ‘In a North Korean Nuclear Defector’s Own Words’, KPA Journal 2/11 (November 2012).

²⁹ National Threat Iniative, ‘IRT 2000 Nuclear Research Reactor’ at http://www.nti.org/learn/facilities/767/.

³⁰ Eurochemic was a consortium owned by thirteen European countries that ran a plant dedicated to the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel from 1966–1974; it disseminated developed technologies widely. See Olli Heinonen, ‘North Korea’s Nuclear Enrichment: Capabilities and Consequences’ at http://www.38north.org/2011/06/heinonen062211/.

³¹ David Albright, ‘North Korean Plutonium Production’, Science and Global Security 5 (September 1994), 63–87. International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), North Korea’s Weapons Programmes, 36–39.

³² New reseach based on the Hungarian archives suggested that North Korea was openly seeking assistance in the consruction of reactors (Szalontai and Rachchenko 2006). On the indirect British role, Douglas Hogg, a Conservative minister, admitted in a written parliamentary reply in 1994 that the Yongbyon reactor had ‘generic similarities to the reactors operated by British Nuclear Fuels’ and that ‘design information of these British reactors is not classified and has appeared in technical journals.’

³³ The name ‘magnox’ came from the alloy used to clad the fuel rods, a technology that the North Korean also appropriated.

³⁴ David Albright, Peddling Peril: How The Secret Nuclear Trade Arms America’s Enemies (New York: Free Press 2010). David Albright and Paul Brannan, ‘Taking Stock: North Korea’s Uranium Enrichment Program’, Institute for Science and International Security, Oct. 2011) at https://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/ISIS_DPRK_UEP.pdf. Siegfried S. Hecker, ‘A Return Trip to North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Complex’, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Nov. (Stanford University 2010) at https://fsi-live.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/HeckerYongbyon.pdf.

³⁵ Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire (New York: Free Press 2006), 296.

³⁶ Albright and Brannan, ‘Taking Stock: North Korea’s Uranium Enrichment Program’.

³⁷ see note 37 above.

³⁸ Hecker, ‘A Return Trip to North Korea’s Yongbyon Nuclear Complex’.

³⁹ David Albright, ‘North Korea’s Suspect, Former Small-Scale Enrichment Plant’, ISIS 21, Sept. 2016. at http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/North_Koreas_Pilot_Enrichment_Plant_21Jul2016_Final.pdf

⁴⁰ Early suspect firms involved in the program are believed to be the Ryonha Machinery Joint Venture Corporation in Pyongyang, the Kusong Machine-Tool Plant in North Pyongan Province, and the Huichon Machine Tool Factory in Huichon city (Albright and Brannan, ‘Taking Stock: North Korea’s Uranium Enrichment Program’, 2010, 21).

⁴¹ ‘Statement of DPRK government on its withdrawal from NPT’, KCNA, Jan.10 2003.

⁴² AFP, ‘“Test Explosions” at DPRK Nuclear Facility,’ June 28 1991; Crisis Group, ‘Asia Report No. 168: North Korea’s Nuclear and Missile Programs’, June 2009, 9–11; and David Albright and Kevin O’Neill, Solving the North Korean Nuclear Puzzle (Washington DC: ISIS Press, 2000).

⁴³ Markus Schiller, Characterizing the North Korean Nuclear Missile Threat (Santa Monica: RAND 2012).

⁴⁴ Joshua Pollack, ‘Ballistic Missile Trajectory: The Evolution of North Korea’s Ballistic Missile Market’, Nonproliferation Review 18/2 (June 2011), 411–429.

⁴⁵ Tai Ming Cheung, ‘Innovation in China’s Defense Technology Base-Foreign Technology and Military Capabilities’, Journal of Strategic Studies 36 (September 2016), 5–6.

⁴⁶ Heavy material industry of North Korea, North Korea Information, searched in 17 October 2017, http://nkinfo.unikorea.go.kr/nkp/overview/nkOverview.do?sumryMenuId=EC212.

⁴⁷ First Bureau, firearms and general logistics equipment; Second Bureau, tanks and armored vehicle; Third Bureau, artillery; Sixth Bureau, shipbuilding; Seventh Bureaa, aircraft and communications equipment. Hong Song-pyo, ‘North Korea’s Military Science and Technology,’ Kunsa Nontan, Apr. 29 2005. See also Dan Pinkston, The North Korean Ballistic Missile Program (Carlisle: Strategic Studies Institute 2008) 15, 41–2.

⁴⁸ SBS news, http://news.sbs.co.kr/news/endPage.do?news_id=N1004383078 Another important educational and research initiative was the creation of the Science University in 1967 in Pyongsong. Falling under the Academy of Science, it was tasked with training scientists and engineers who earn the privilege of study abroad and subsequently work at the Academy of Defense or Academy of Science.

⁴⁹ At http://www.nti.org/learn/countries/north-korea/facilities/.

⁵⁰ In addition to the works referenced below, this section relies on two websites that provide high-quality information on the programs: the National Threat Initiative at http://www.nti.org/learn/countries/north-korea/delivery-systems/ and the CSIS Missile Threat Initiative at https://missilethreat.csis.org/country/dprk/.

⁵¹ An extensive literature now exists on these programs. See Bermudez, 1999c, Bermudez, ‘Going Ballistic: North Korea’s Advanced Missile Capabilities’, Jane’s Intelligence Review, Mar. 2009; IISS, North Korea’s Weapons Programmes; Pinkston, The North Korean Ballistic Missile Program; Wright 2009; Schiller, Characterizing the North Korean Nuclear Missile Threat; and Postol and Schiller, ‘The North Korean Ballistic Missile Program’, Korea Observer 47/4 (December 2016), 751–806.

⁵² These systems were themselves modified versions of Soviet designs. See Bermudez 1999c, 3–4.

⁵³ Pinkston, The North Korean Ballistic Missile Program, 15.

⁵⁴ On expansion of the Musudan-ri facility during the 2000s, see Digital Globe, ‘Musudan-ri Missile Test Facility North Korea, 15 February 2002–26 March, 2009ʹ. at https://fas.org/nuke/guide/dprk/facility/musudan-ri.pdf.

⁵⁵ Theodore Postol and Markus Schiller, ‘The North Korean Ballistic Missile Program’, Korea Observer 47/4 (December 2016), 767.

⁵⁶ Schiller, Characterizing the North Korean Nuclear Missile Threat.

⁵⁷ Pinkston, The North Korean Ballistic Missile Program, 17.

⁵⁸ Joseph Bermudez, ‘A History of Ballistic Missile Development in the DPRK’, Center for Nonproliferation Studies Occasional Paper #2, Nov. 1999, 18–19.

⁵⁹ Pollack, ‘Ballistic Missile Trajectory’.

⁶⁰ Bermudez, ‘A History of Ballistic Missile Development in the DPRK’, 13–15.

⁶¹ Wright and Kadyshev, ‘An Analysis of the North Korean Nodong Missile’, Science & Global Security 4/2 (1994), 129–60.

⁶² Two more groups of Russian experts planning to travel to North Korea were intercepted in 1992, one of missile engineers the other associated with the country’s nuclear program, but it is not known how many got through. Not until late 1993 was North Korean Major General Nam Gae Wok, stationed in Moscow as a recruiter, finally expelled from Russia. See Yonhap (Seoul), 23 April 1994; in JPRS-TND-94-011, 16 May 1994, 51–52. UPI, 10 February 1993, in Executive News Service, 10 February 1993. Mikhail Popov, Rabochaya Tribuna, (Moscow) 11 February 1993, 3; in JPRS-UST-93-002, 8 April 1993, 52. KBS-1 Radio Network (Seoul), 21 December 1992; in JPRS-TND-93-001, 7 January 1993, 6. Itar-Tass, 4 February 1993; in JPRS-TND-93-005, 12 February 1993, 14–15. UPI, 10 February 1993; in Executive News Service, 10 February 1993. Itar-Tass, 24 February 1993; in FBIS-SOV-93-035, 24 February 1993, 11–12. Armed Forces Journal International, April 1993, 9.

⁶³ Tsutomu Nishioka, ‘Researchers in Japan helped N. Korea develop Nuclear Missiles’, Japan Institute for National Fundamentals, Apr. 7 2016. https://en.jinf.jp/weekly/archives/4308.

⁶⁴ Wright and Kadyshev, ‘An Analysis of the North Korean Nodong Missile’, 129–60, missing in the references. Joseph Bermudez, ‘Going Ballistic: North Korea’s Advanced Missile Capabilities’, Jane’s Intelligence Review, Mar. 2009.

⁶⁵. See for example Philip Maxon, ‘Official Estimates of the TP-2ʹ, 38North, Jan. 28 2011 for a thorough review of the US intelligence estimates of the Taepodong’s capabilities at http://www.38north.org/2011/01/estimates-of-taepodong-2/.

⁶⁶ Markus Schiller and Robert Schmucker, ‘Explaining the Musudan: New Insights on the North Korean SS-N-6 Technology’, May 2012.

⁶⁷ Joel S. Wit and Sun Young Ahn, ‘North Korea’s Nuclear Futures: Technology and Strategy’, U.S. Korea Institute at SAIS, Feb. 2015.

⁶⁸ Michael Elleman, ‘The Secret to North Korea’s ICBM Success’, International Institute for Strategic Studies, Aug. 2017.

⁶⁹ For example, ‘U.S. Spy Agencies: North Korea is Working on New Missiles’, Washington Post, July 30 2018; and Reuters, ‘North Koreaw Making Bomb Fuel Despite Denuclearization Pledge,’ July 25 2018 at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-usa/north-korea-making-bomb-fuel-despite-denuclearization-pledge-pompeo-idUSKBN1KF2QT.

⁷⁰ Vann H. Van Diepen and Michael Elleman, ‘North Korea Unveils Two New Strategic Missiles in October 10 Parade’, 38North, Oct 10 2020 at https://www.38north.org/author/vann-h-van-diepen/.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by, or in part by, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory and the U.S. Army Research Office under contract/grant No. [W911NF-15-1-0407]. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Army Research Office.

Notes on contributors

Stephan Haggard

Stephan Haggard is the Lawrence and Sallye Krause Professor of Korea-Pacific Studies, and serves as director of the Korea-Pacific Program at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California San Diego in La Jolla, California.

Tai Ming Cheung

Tai Ming Cheung is the director of the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation and a professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California San Diego in La Jolla, California.