North Korea says it has a new “strategic weapon” that will stun the world with “shocking” action, the Associated Press reports, and North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un, plans to deploy the weapon soon as a way of challenging the United States’ nuclear weapons superiority.
North Korea isn’t giving many details about its super-secret doomsday device, but Kim Jong Un appears to be using it as a bargaining chip in stalled trade talks with the Trump Administration.
“Expressing deep frustration over stalled nuclear talks, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un warned of unspecified ‘shocking’ action,” the AP reported Wednesday, “and that his country will soon reveal a new ‘strategic weapon’ to the world as its bolsters its nuclear deterrent in face of ‘gangster-like’ U.S. pressure.”
The Trump Administration has been trying to negotiate with North Korea for years and President Donald Trump sees an inked deal with the rouge Communist nation as a potential hallmark of his term. Just a few short years ago, Trump did manage to secure an anti-proliferation treaty with North Korea, halting, at the time, North Korea’s dogged pursuit of nuclear weapons and development of “intercontinental ballistic missiles.”
Since then, though, North Korea has continued its weapons development programs, pursuing, the AP says, new, more accurate short-range missiles: “[Kim Jong Un’s] arsenal is now estimated to include 40-50 nuclear bombs and various delivery systems, including solid-fuel missiles designed to beat missile-defense systems and developmental ICBMs potentially capable of reaching the U.S. mainland.”
The new “strategic weapon,” experts say, is probably a nuclear weapon.
“Strategic weapons usually refer to nuclear-capable delivery systems such as ICBMs, but North Korea otherwise has been vague about what new arms it would display,” AP continued. “It announced in December that it performed two “crucial” tests at its long-range rocket launch site that would further strengthen its nuclear deterrent.”
The North Koreans are certainly trying to sell the “strategic weapon” as a way of encouraging the United States to return to the bargaining table.
“(Kim) said that we will never allow the impudent U.S. to abuse the DPRK-U.S. dialogue for meeting its sordid aim but will shift to a shocking actual action to make it pay for the pains sustained by our people so far and for the development so far restrained,” the People’s Republic of North Korea said in an official statement to global media.
But just as Kim Jong Un’s government was announcing plans to blow a U.S. city off the map, the same government signaled that it’s ready to restart anti-nuclear talks, according to NPR, when it didn’t manage to set off its “strategic weapon” by its own, self-created deadline.
“After keeping the world waiting and watching, first for a ‘Christmas present’ to the U.S., and then for a New Year’s shift to a harder line on nuclear negotiations, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un delivered neither,” public radio reported. “Some analysts believe a key reason behind his calculations may be President Trump’s prospects for surviving an impeachment process and possibly winning a second term in the White House.”