KB News Desk
US President Donald Trump’s claim that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un possesses “57 very powerful nuclear weapons” is drawing attention not only for its unusually specific figure, but also for what it could signal ahead of a possible meeting between the two leaders later this year.
Trump’s remarks treated North Korea’s nuclear arsenal as a reality, while stressing his personal relationship with Kim.
“The fact that I get along with him — that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. He has 57 very powerful nuclear weapons,” Trump told reporters Wednesday.
“They should have never allowed it. If I were president, I wouldn’t have allowed it. But he’s got them.”
Trump’s remarks appear to be a break away from Washington’s stance of acknowledging North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons without accepting it as a nuclear-weapon state and maintaining denuclearization as its stated policy goal.
Trump also said he expected to meet Kim later this year, although no meeting has been formally announced and Pyongyang has not confirmed that talks to set a summit are underway.
The reference to 57 nuclear weapons was not Trump’s first attempt to put a number on North Korea’s arsenal. In April, he said North Korea possessed 45 nuclear weapons, making his latest figure a dozen higher just four months later.
Trump did not explain the source of the figure or specify whether it referred to assembled nuclear warheads, deployed weapons or another measure of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities. Estimates also vary in South Korea.
South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back told lawmakers Thursday that Seoul generally puts the number at around 80 to 120, while stressing that an exact figure is difficult to determine.
Lee Sang-kyu, head of the Nuclear Security Research Division at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, estimated last year that North Korea could possess 127 to 150 nuclear weapons based on assessments of its plutonium and highly enriched uranium production.
The exact number, however, may be less important than Trump’s choice to publicly describe North Korea as possessing dozens of nuclear weapons while seeking another meeting with Kim.
Trump has repeatedly referred to North Korea as a “nuclear power” since returning to office, while his administration has continued to maintain denuclearization as its stated objective.
North Korea has also repeatedly demanded that Washington accept its nuclear status rather than resume negotiations premised on giving up its arsenal.
At the Workers’ Party congress in February, Kim said there was “no reason” the two countries could not get along if the United States respected North Korea’s current constitutional status and abandoned what Pyongyang calls its hostile policy.
Chung Sung-jang, vice president of Seoul-based Sejong Institute, said Trump’s language had already moved close to recognizing North Korea’s nuclear status in practice.
“President Trump and the US defense secretary have already made remarks that appear to recognize North Korea as a de facto nuclear-armed state,” Chung said.
Chung added that if talks resume, Washington could shift away from seeking North Korea’s complete denuclearization as an immediate goal and instead seek a freeze aimed at preventing Pyongyang from producing additional nuclear weapons.
“Rather than demanding complete denuclearization from the outset, negotiations could first focus on freezing North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and preventing any further increase in its nuclear arsenal,” Chung said.
According to Chung, although Seoul and Washington have drastically reduced the Ulchi Freedom Shield combined exercise that is now ongoing, the move is likely to fall far short of Pyongyang’s demands if it is to accept such a freeze.
“North Korea is unlikely to be satisfied simply with a reduction in combined exercises and could demand their suspension altogether, along with sanctions relief and a reduction of US troops in South Korea,” Chung said.
He added that another Trump-Kim meeting would likely require substantial preparations, unlike their impromptu encounter at Panmunjom in the inter-Korean Demilitarized Zone in June 2019.
“The Panmunjom meeting was arranged without sufficient prior coordination and produced little substantive progress,” Chung said. “This time, there would need to be advance negotiations, such as talks between the US secretary of state and North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui.”
Yu Ji-hoon, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, also linked the UFS reduction to efforts to resume dialogue with Pyongyang.
“Trump’s remarks on reducing the combined exercise appear intended to use the exercise as a means of creating an environment for negotiations, with the resumption of dialogue with North Korea in mind,” Yu said.
