North Korean border guards stand at the “Joint Security Area” in Panmunjom along the inter-Korean “demilitarized zone” (DMZ) in June 2008. North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons dates back to the Korean War, though it lacked the necessary technological know-how for decades. (Wikimedia Commons/(stephan))

How North Korea Got the Nuclear Bomb

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North Korea’s interest in nuclear weapons was decades in the making—but its first earnest attempt during the 1990s was stymied by external factors.

On October 9, 2006, North Korea conducted its first nuclear weapons test. The explosion occurred underground, in a mine shaft at Punggye-ri, a mountainous test site in northeastern North Korea. The test marked the culmination of a decades-long effort to acquire nuclear weapons, and made North Korea the ninth and most recent nuclear-armed state—and the first to conduct a live nuclear explosive test since Pakistan in 1998.

The international community condemned the test, and the United Nations issued sanctions. For a time, the international community prevailed on North Korea to restore the “denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula—offering it an implicit bargain in which the United States would agree to keep nuclear weapons out of South Korea if it abandoned its nuclear program. Twenty years later,........

© The National Interest