North Korea

Experts estimate that North Korea may have enough plutonium and highly enriched uranium for 20 to 25 nuclear weapons, a tiny amount compared to nations like China, the United States or Russia. But the crisis with North Korea presents one of the greatest global security threats today. And the crisis is only getting worse as Pyongyang races to develop its ability to strike targets farther and farther away.

Verbal threats and other provocations between the North and the US have stoked this growing fire, bringing us to the brink of war in mid 2017. North Korea has developed an ICBM capable of reaching the United States and reportedly has a miniaturized nuclear warhead to match. If diplomatic action isn’t taken soon, it may be only a matter of time before a devastating regional war breaks out in the region. Threatening military action in the region  will almost certainly fail, but more ominously will likely result in one or more of three outcomes, all of them bad: accidental war or military miscalculation, weapons-grade plutonium or uranium secreted out of North Korea, and Pyongyang increasing its leverage by continuing to produce fissile material. Ploughshares Fund and its grantees are committed to preventing a humanitarian catastrophe and finding a peaceful resolution to the North Korea crisis.

Latest News and Analysis on Nuclear Weapons in North Korea

  • VIDEO: John Kerry in Defense of Diplomacy

    Secretary of State John Kerry spoke in Defense of Diplomacy at our Chain Reaction 2017 event in San Francisco on June 5. Here what he said: "There's really a bigger fight right now that we have to undertake. And I just want to say a word about that. It's a fight on behalf of diplomacy. It's a...

    July 6, 2017 - By Ploughshares Fund
  • Joe Cirincione discusses the North Korea situation

    The Trump Administration has still failed to define a coherent approach to dealing with North Korea's missile tests and budding nuclear weapons program. President Donald Trump has recently signaled that his administation would be willing to talk with North Korea, contradicting Secretary of State...

    May 19, 2017 - By Ploughshares Fund
  • North Korea: On the Verge?

    We are extremely alarmed by reports that North Korea is preparing for another nuclear test. We have now reached a new stage of crisis on the Korean Peninsula. To prepare and respond to the growing emergency, Ploughshares Fund has activated a network of partners and grantees to do everything we...

    April 14, 2017 - By Ploughshares Fund
  • Philip Yun on Stopping a North Korea Catastrophe

    "It's not clear what North Korea is going to do on April 15th, before, on or around, but you can expect they are going to do something. There is speculation that there will be either a missile test or a nuclear test. We know that the testing grounds for where they normally do the...

    April 13, 2017 - By Ploughshares Fund
  • How Donald Trump Could Blow Up the World All by Himself

    President Donald Trump alone controls the US nuclear arsenal. He alone decides whether to use one or one thousand nuclear weapons. He does not have to check with anyone, not even Steve Bannon. At a moment’s notice, he can launch some 900 nuclear weapons with the destructive power of 20,000...

    March 29, 2017 - By Joe Cirincione
  • Watch: Philip Yun on North Korea Threat

    North Korea poses one of the greatest nuclear threats on the planet. The US is in the middle of a slow-motion train-wreck with North Korea over its nuclear weapons and missile program -- and President Trump's loose talk about nuclear weapons in the region hasn't helped. Unless we do something...

    March 10, 2017 - By Ploughshares Fund
  • Hard Choices on North Korea

    The assassination of Kim Jong-Nam, the older half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, is yet another bizarre, “can’t stop watching” episode in a string of reality TV events that is now commonplace in our public discourse.  It’s easy to get sucked into the intrigue, but it...

    February 28, 2017 - By Philip Yun
  • Culture, North Korea and Nuclear Impasse

    At Ploughshares Fund, we support emergent expert voices as a way of injecting fresh ideas into nuclear security and educating the public about nuclear weapons. As part of that commitment, we are beginning a new interview series in which up-and-coming researchers, particularly in the humanities...

    February 3, 2017 - By Anonymous
  • Stop Nuclear War

    The nuclear satchel, pictured above, follows the president wherever he goes. Did you know that for as little as $5/month you can help us in our fight to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons threats during the Trump administration?

    December 9, 2016 - By Ploughshares Fund
  • Learn from Iran, Engage North Korea

    Since official relations between Washington and Tehran were severed in 1980, five American presidents spanning a period of three decades — from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush — have struggled to figure out how to deal with Iran. As a candidate for the presidency in 2007, then-Senator Barack...

    November 15, 2016 - By Ploughshares Fund