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As global attention focuses on the war

in the Middle East and missiles being

launched in the region, one country,

thousands of miles away, has been

watching closely and firing missiles of

its own. North Korea launched ballistic

missiles toward waters off its east

coast.

>> This is believed to be North Korea's

seventh ballistic missile test of the

year and potentially

>> North Korean leader Kim Jong Un

personally oversaw the latest missile

launches on April 19th. [music]

State media reported that Kim expressed

great satisfaction over the test firing.

>> [music]

>> You have Kim Jong Un watching missiles

flying off. His daughter was there as

well on hand. And they show in state

media [music] the precision with which

the missiles hit this island.

John Herskovitz is a Bloomberg editor

based in Tokyo. He's been covering North

Korea for more than 20 years.

John says the purpose of these missile

tests is twofold. First, they're a

demonstration for key overseas buyer.

North Korea has been supplying these

missiles to Russia and the tests have

varied to show the various ways that the

missiles can be used. And then there's

also the message North Korea is trying

to send to the US at a time when

American military resources are

stretched by conflicts elsewhere.

You have the message to the outside

world that North Korea's missiles are

abundant, deadly, and can do far more

[music] than imagined.

And they're looking at the US and

saying, "You have your defense systems.

[music]

We know what they are and we're rolling

out these systems trying to defeat

them."

>> [music]

>> This is the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg

News. I'm Won Ha.

Every week [music] we take you inside

some of the world's biggest and most

powerful economies and the markets,

tycoons, and businesses [music] that

drive this ever-shifting region.

Today on the show, how North Korea's

build-up of nuclear missiles

>> [music]

>> has reached a dangerous tipping point

for the US.

Now, John, most of us, of course, are

not weapons investigators. When we talk

about a country's nuclear capability or

nuclear arsenal, what are we actually

counting? What are we talking about?

It's a lot of different things. The

first thing is fissile material. This is

like stuff for bombs and it's usually

plutonium or highly enriched uranium.

The other thing is warheads, the actual

bombs. They're small enough to go on to

missiles. If they need to be delivered

by bombers, they're even small enough to

go on to like artillery shells. And then

we have the delivery systems. These are

the ballistic missiles, the bombers, the

things that would actually be capable of

taking a nuclear bomb and sending it to

the enemy. So, for North Korea, they

have lots of places to produce fissile

material.

They are making warheads and then the

delivery systems, which are the

ballistic missiles from the short range

for, you know, South Korea, maybe Japan,

all the way to ICBMs, intercontinental

ballistic missile, which are designed to

hit the US. For years, North Korea has

sat at the bottom of the global nuclear

hierarchy.

In 2018, after meeting Kim Jong Un,

President Donald Trump declared in a

tweet that North Korea is no longer a

nuclear threat.

Now, almost a decade later, North Korea

still has the smallest arsenal among the

nine countries that have nuclear arms

capabilities.

But John says that picture may be

changing in critical ways.

It's on a trajectory to have a

significant number of ICBMs and

warheads, which will just keep on

growing, getting on parity with the US,

Russia, and to a lesser extent China.

That it's not in the picture, but being

along the lines of Britain, France,

India, and Pakistan is something that's

realistic if the trajectory continues

over the next 5 to 10 years. What do we

know about how North Korea's nuclear

program has evolved? How extensive is

the nuclear arsenal now compared to more

recent times, you know, Trump's first

administration? When Trump left office

after his first term, North Korea showed

that it could fire off an ICBM and that

it had the ability

to build warheads. Whether North Korea

could affix a warhead on top of an ICBM

that could reach the US and deliver a

strike that was questionable.

It was at a stage where it could produce

about six bombs worth of nuclear

material a year, according to estimates

from nuclear experts.

If we look at where it is now,

North Korea has built out its ICBM

arsenal. It's modernized its missiles.

It's built up new launcher systems.

And it has increased its ability of

producing fissile material to maybe 12

to 15 a year. The president of South

Korea has said earlier this year it's

about 20 bombs worth of material a year.

John, North Korea is one of the most

isolated countries in the world. How has

it that it's been able to make such

progress on nuclear weapons in such a

short amount of time?

Kim Jong Un has prioritized

rocket munitions as a key component of

his government. And being so heavily

sanctioned, Kim Jong Un has realized the

more he can do at home,

the better

the system becomes.

They've moved as much of the production

as they can to within its borders. He

has devoted a lot of energy into

building up missile production, to

building launchers. North Korea is also

more information savvy under Kim Jong Un

than it was under the previous leaders.

The lots of these technologies are old

technologies, which are available, ready

for copying. The North Korean

short-range ballistic missile, which was

involved in the recent test,

is very similar to a Russian missile.

Making short-range ballistic missiles is

something that a lot of countries have

done. North Korea has studied it. This

is a priority for Kim. And you can see

the way that the production has gone.

They're rolling out more and more of

these short-range ballistic missiles.

During the Cold War, during the Korean

War, the Soviet Union used to supply

arms to North Korea. Now North Korea is

supplying arms to Russia.

Things have changed.

>> [music]

>> As of last year, North Korea was

estimated to have 50 warheads and enough

fissile material for 90 bombs

altogether.

That's according to the Stockholm

International Peace Research [music]

Institute.

John, how do experts arrive at those

estimates? And how confident are we in

those numbers? The warhead [music]

figure we don't know for sure. It's not

out in the open.

The fissile material, we have a pretty

good idea. So, if you just like

>> [music]

>> go into Google Earth and type in

Yongbyon 5-megawatt reactor, you can see

it. This is its main nuclear facility.

[music]

The IAEA has been to the site. US

scientists have been to the site. So,

they know what this can do and it's an

old design. It's so it's well known what

the capacity is for this. [music]

In uranium enrichment sites,

North Korea in the past year or so

released photos from inside these

facilities. [music]

It showed the centrifuges, which do the

enrichment.

>> [music]

>> Very detailed. They wanted to show the

world, "This is what we have." Nuclear

scientists who are really good at

looking at this wonky stuff, counting

the centrifuges and how they're

arranged, can figure out how much

[music] uranium per year can be enriched

at these sites. And North Korea is

making more and more of this bomb-grade

material for its weapons. That's growing

and we can see this.

John says that steady growth has pushed

North Korea's nuclear program toward a

critical tipping point. It's no longer

just about estimates and stockpiles. Now

North Korea's ongoing production has

experts asking whether US missile

defenses could fend off an attack. North

Korea is getting to a stage where it can

produce more ICBMs than the US has

interceptors to take them down.

The US has a certain number of

ground-based interceptors in Alaska and

also, I believe, in California that are

designed to hit ICBMs.

ICBMs fly like 1,000, 1,300 km above the

Earth, like three or four times the

height of the International Space

Station. And they go really fast.

Getting interceptors up there that can

hit them is tough. It's expensive as

well. So, the US has about 44 of these

interceptors and they take about two

interceptors for each ICBM. We spoke to

one expert who said North Korea is

probably at about 24 ICBMs now and

building them out. So, you're at a stage

where you could theoretically overwhelm

the defense systems and it increases the

chances of delivering a strike on the

US. Wow, so that's a really dangerous

math game. It is a dangerous math game

and it's like there other interceptor

systems out there, but you have to be in

the right place at the right time. It's

just not a lot of time. If you fire off

an ICBM from North Korea, you're looking

like 25 to 35 minutes from launch to

impact in the US. We obviously don't

want to be alarmist, but it is a bit

scary though to think about. Could North

Korea with all of these ICBMs and

nuclear missile now, could they launch a

nuclear strike that the US could not

stop? The US has experts confidence that

it can deter and intercept a North

Korean nuclear attack, but there's a

chance now and with each passing year,

the chance of that happening becomes

higher and higher. The more North Korea

can produce ICBMs, warheads, and bomb

grade material to put in them, the

greater the risk for the US.

By the same token, if North Korea were

to strike the US, this would be

suicidal. It would be the end of Kim

Jong-un's regime. It would invite an

absolutely massive retaliatory strike

that would damage North Korea from top

to bottom in ways from which would take

years and decades to recover. And John

says it's still not clear if North

Korea's weapons could conduct an actual

long-range attack on the US.

They've detonated nuclear devices.

They've done mock nuclear strikes with

the short-range ballistic missiles. The

things that we don't know is if North

Korea has re-entry capability for its

warheads, heat shields, cuz you're

re-entering the atmosphere like we saw

the Artemis 2 mission, you're doing that

sort of thing. It gets really hot. So,

we don't know if North Korea has the

re-entry capability for its warheads.

But, this is a 1950s,

1960s technology. I spoke to one nuclear

expert who said that if a country has

the ability to build an ICBM, they

probably have the ability to have a

re-entry vehicle.

After the break, how North Korea's

aggressive nuclear bet has changed its

relations with all of its neighbors

and made it a more [music] successful

economy than it's ever been.

President Trump's relationship with Kim

Jong-un has swung back [music] and forth

over the years from calling Kim Rocket

Man Rocket Man should have been handled

a long time ago. to famously saying that

he and Kim fell in love in 2018. And we

would go back and forth and then we fell

in love. Okay? [music]

No, we

He wrote me beautiful letters.

And they're great letters.

We fell in love.

After a series of high-profile meetings

during Trump's [music] first term, talks

between Washington and Pyongyang

ultimately collapsed [music] without a

deal to scale back North Korea's nuclear

program.

Since then, direct contact between

[music] Trump and Kim has largely dried

up. There's been speculation about

whether that could change, especially

[music] with Trump expected to travel to

China next month. But Bloomberg's John

Herskovitz says that even if the two

leaders do meet again, the balance of

power has shifted.

North Korea [music]

still shows some respect to Trump, but

they've also demanded that the US accept

it as a nuclear power, treat it as such,

and saying that it can't go forward with

any negotiations unless it gets a equal

billing at the table. So, the difference

with Trump is still there, but the

reliance on Trump just isn't as great as

it once was. It's getting help from

Russia. It still has China as an ally

and friend and it's found more ways to

get money. It has cybercrimes.

It's also that's moving to Russia,

that's a way of getting more aid and

support from Putin.

I mean, how how has that picture changed

you mentioned with Russia and and the

war in in Ukraine?

North Korea has some of the largest

stores of artillery shells in the world

because of its standoff with South

Korea.

And North Korea had millions of

artillery shells and artillery rockets

that it sent to Russia. On top of this,

parts for Soviet-era tanks, North Korea

has. They have like really old clunkers.

No one else has this amount of stuff

that Russia needed for Ukraine and they

have an avenue to get it there.

And in return for that flow of [music]

weapons, John says Russia has been

sending back something just as critical

for North Korea,

money.

Yeah, we've gotten some estimates about

the value [music] of the aid that North

Korea has received from Russia, maybe

like 16 to 20 billion dollars. North

Korea's economy is about [music] 25

billion a year. Whether it's 16 or 20,

whatever it is, it's the largest influx

[music] of aid that has happened during

Kim Jong-un's reign. [music]

It's solidified his ability to rule the

country and it's brought a stability

which means that we're going to see

[music]

likely see several more years of Kim

having very solid [music] control over

the country. Prices have been

stabilized.

Goods are moving into the country and

you can see it in some of the stuff that

North Korea is doing. North Korea has

gone on a

>> [music]

>> splurge of building housing and

factories across the country. It's

[music] getting materials which were

once banned under sanctions and they

seem to [music] be appearing in the

country now helping them do a building

boom.

So, the fact that North Korea gets

assistance now from Russia in exchange

for military weaponry that Russia needs,

that totally cuts out the need for US

assistance or US

holding out the carrot of of we'll lift

sanctions if you give up your nuclear

program. What does that mean then for US

leverage in this new world?

There just isn't much leverage that the

US has. The leverage is that we can

offer more economic incentives, but it's

difficult for Kim to accept them. Yeah,

part of the the system in North Korea is

that there's sacrifice for the

collective good.

If everything becomes abundant, if the

US isn't a threat, then why is the

leadership protecting North Korea from

the US and a possible invasion?

So, keeping the US at a bit of a

distance works in North Korea's

propaganda apparatus. At this point, it

has help from Russia.

The support from China is there. It's in

one of its strongest positions that it

has ever been. John says that shift has

Pyongyang operating from a position of

unusual confidence.

And that matters when global tension and

US military resources are stretched

elsewhere.

North Korea sees its nuclear arsenal as

the sword and the shield protecting the

country and being able to inflict heavy

blows on its opponents.

So, the idea of having this arsenal has

just been reinforced because of what

happened in Iran.

For North Korea, John says the fighting

involving Iran is being closely studied

as a preview of how the US might operate

in a real conflict.

North Korea has seen

how the US works strategically.

>> [music]

>> What it will strike first in the event

of a war. It will go after nuclear

facilities. It will go after missile

storage sites. It will go after air

defense systems. [music]

For North Korea, this has probably been

a wake-up call. We have to do better at

protecting our missiles. We have to do

better at having our air defense systems

ready to take [music] on the US. So,

they've seen how the US operates now and

they're probably looking at how to

bolster its defenses in case the US

strikes first.

>> [music]

>> And there's also what has gone on in

Venezuela, what's gone on in Iran.

>> [music]

>> There's the worry of the so-called

decapitation strike, getting the leader.

So, North Korea has been thinking about

this for years and I'm sure their policy

people have been looking at what to do

if there is an attack on Kim [music]

Jong-un.

How do we respond? What systems we have

in place?

That leaves a broader question.

How should the world respond now that

North Korea's nuclear capabilities

appear to have reached a tipping point?

Yeah, there's some people who have

argued that instead of removing nuclear

weapons from the Korean Peninsula, we

should talk about limitation,

monitoring, getting a threshold, and

keeping the state there. Kind of like

what the US and Russians did during the

Cold War with the various strategic arms

limitation treaties and things of that

sort. That should be the new way of

thinking, setting limits, verification,

and [music] accepting North Korea as

having nuclear weapons, and trying to

cap what it has. I think the

determination of South Korea and the US

and Japan and [music] NATO allies will

be to eliminate North Korea's nuclear

weapons program entirely. It's just the

reality and what people want in theory

are [music] different. So, maybe we'll

see a shift in thinking of the US

administration about how it treats North

Korea. [music]

But,

at this time the policy is getting rid

of its nuclear arsenal, but perhaps

[music] that should be reassessed.

>> [music]

>> This is the Big Take Asia from Bloomberg

News. [music] I'm Wan Wa.

To get more from the Big Take and

unlimited access to all [music] of

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