Nuclear program

Yoon Suk-yeol isn’t a household name in the United States, but his comments this week have put him in the international spotlight. Speaking at a press briefing on Wednesday, the South Korean president openly surmised that if North Korea’s nuclear weapons program continued unabated, Seoul may have to explore an option the United States wouldn’t like: producing nuclear weapons of its own. Referring to Pyongyang’s weapons programs, Yoon said, "It’s possible that the problem gets worse and our country will introduce tactical nuclear weapons or build them on our own. If that’s the case, we can have our own nuclear weapons pretty quickly, given our scientific and technological capabilities.” The remarks generated immediate pushback from nuclear security experts.

If you don’t follow North Korea for a living as I do, you likely have forgotten all about the so-called hermit kingdom and its portly pariah of a leader, Kim Jong-un. Sure, there are the occasional headlines. Kim has lost a whole bunch of weight. The country is locked down as it has no way to combat Covid-19 and would never let in the international community to distribute vaccines. And, of course, there was last night's missile test. But even then the media does not seem to care much when it comes to North Korea. The reasons are quite obvious: with the Omicron variant sweeping the world, even a regime such as North Korea's has trouble breaking into the news cycle.