North Korea eyes ‘exponential’ hike in nuclear weapons capability

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - SEOUL — North Korea has unveiled a new facility to produce weapons-grade nuclear material as the South Korean military said it was closely coordinating with the United States to monitor Pyongyang's nuclear activities.

Kim Jong Un inspected the new plant on Wednesday and announced plans to “beef up our state’s nuclear forces at an exponential rate,” according to a report from state-run media on Thursday.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said the facility used “more sophisticated technology” but didn’t provide further details.

It’s not clear where the plant is or when it began operations. State media photos showed what appeared to be a large hall housing centrifuges, which are needed to enrich weapons-grade uranium.

The North Korean leader said that his country has more than doubled its capacity to produce weapons-grade nuclear material in the past five years and that the new plant will help strengthen its nuclear war deterrent, according to KCNA.

Kim instituted the push for more nuclear weapons under a five-year plan that was implemented after denuclearization talks with the United States, including three meetings with US President Donald Trump during his first term, ended in failure.

News of the new North Korean nuclear plant comes as Washington is asking Iran to give up nuclear materials that it could develop into nuclear weapons.

North Korea already has enough nuclear material for up to 90 warheads and is believed to have assembled around 50, according to a Congressional Research Service report from March.

The International Atomic Energy Agency reported in March that North Korea has at least two active nuclear enrichment plants, one in Yongbyon and another in Kangson.

The agency said it was monitoring the construction of a new building at Yongbyon “which has dimensions and infrastructure, including power supply and cooling capacity, similar to the Kangson enrichment facility.”

“The new building is externally complete and internal fitting is likely underway,” the IAEA report said.

In April testimony to the US House Armed Services Committee, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. James Adams, said Pyongyang was “building a probable additional uranium enrichment facility at Yongbyon.”

Whether the facility Kim toured on Wednesday is that new Yongbyon facility or another previously unknown plant could not be determined. The KCNA report did not give a location.

This is at least the third time since September 2024 that state media has published photos of Kim inspecting a uranium enrichment or nuclear material production facility.

Thursday’s KCNA report said the new nuclear plant employed “more sophisticated technology,” and images provided by North Korea showed Kim walking among rows of centrifuges.

Hong Min, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, told CNN the new facility reveals a maturation and scaling of North Korea’s nuclear program.

The report “gives the impression that the center of the gravity has shifted from ‘research and production’ to ‘mass production and munitions’” as officials from the munitions industry and the Nuclear Weapons Institute accompanied Kim, Hong said.

Also, by publishing various photos showing the control room, processing pipes and module zone, North Korea “is intentionally highlighting the aspect of a completed factory in operation,” he said.

Highlighting production facilities over more flashy weapons tests or grand military parades shows North Korea is now projecting it has the infrastructure to make good on its plans to field a robust nuclear deterrent.

Along with building its nuclear enrichment capacity, North Korea has been testing a range of missiles over the past years, and it has successfully tested Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) capable of striking anywhere in the United States, according to the 2026 Annual Threat Assessment from the Office of the US Director of National Intelligence.

Kim on Wednesday praised the country’s nuclear scientists for delivering on goals of the five-year plan and said its nuclear potential is “inconceivable.”

North Korea’s ascension to nuclear-power status has been cited as something Trump has been trying to prevent Iran from duplicating.

Critics of Trump counter that his first administration ripped up a previous Obama-era deal to monitor Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and is now trying to strike a similar agreement after three months of war has failed to achieve regime change in Tehran or the destruction of its nuclear program.

A growing North Korean nuclear arsenal is representative of a worldwide trend, according to the 2026 edition of the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor.

“The number of nuclear warheads available for use by the armed forces of the world’s nine nuclear-armed states had risen to 9,745, with a combined explosive yield equating to more than 135,000 Hiroshima bombs,” the group says.

Russia has the most nuclear weapons, more than 5,400, followed by the US with almost 5,300.