South Korea’s defence minister said Thursday that North Korea likely possesses between 80 and 120 nuclear warheads, a range considerably higher than the figure President Donald Trump cited earlier this week.
Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back told lawmakers during a parliamentary committee session that North Korea is generally understood to hold somewhere between 80 and 120 warheads, though he cautioned that pinning down an exact number remains difficult. He later clarified that the estimate comes from private research organizations rather than official military intelligence, noting that South Korea’s armed forces cannot officially confirm the figures themselves.
Asked to respond to Trump’s comment a day earlier that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un possesses 57 very powerful nuclear weapons, Ahn said the numbers appear somewhat different from South Korea’s own assessment. Trump made that remark at the White House on Wednesday while discussing Kim and plans for a possible meeting between the two leaders later this year.
South Korea has long avoided publicly releasing detailed estimates of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and does not officially recognize Pyongyang as a nuclear armed state, consistent with Seoul’s longstanding policy favoring denuclearization of the peninsula. Ahn reaffirmed that stance when lawmakers asked whether the government now acknowledges North Korea as a nuclear power, saying South Korea cannot officially make that acknowledgment. He also declined to say whether Trump’s reference to a specific warhead count amounted to implicit US recognition of North Korea’s nuclear status, arguing it would not be appropriate for him to comment on remarks made by the American president.
Ahn said South Korea intends to keep relying on the US nuclear umbrella for its security, in keeping with its longstanding non-nuclear policy. He said South Korea cannot pursue its own nuclear weapons program and should not accept the deployment of US tactical nuclear weapons on its territory.
