“The numbers appear somewhat different,” South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back said on Thursday, when lawmakers asked him about President Donald Trump’s count of North Korea’s nuclear weapons.
Trump had said a day earlier that Kim Jong Un has 57 “very powerful nuclear weapons.” Ahn told the lawmakers that private research organizations put the stockpile at between 80 and 120 warheads. He said the exact size cannot be established.
He then pulled back from the range. It was not an official assessment by South Korea’s military, Ahn said. Seoul has traditionally kept detailed estimates of the North’s inventory to itself, and it still refuses to recognize Pyongyang as a nuclear-armed state. Asked directly whether it now accepts North Korea as one, Ahn answered no.
No bomb of its own
A bigger North Korean arsenal does not change South Korea’s own course, according to Ahn. The country will keep relying on the U.S. nuclear umbrella. “We cannot develop nuclear weapons,” he said. “Nor should we accept the deployment of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons.”
Trump’s push for talks
The testimony came as Trump tries to restart diplomacy with Kim. On Wednesday he said he expected to meet the North Korean leader later this year. The two held summits in 2018 and 2019, and both efforts failed over sanctions relief and North Korea’s nuclear program.
Trump has also ordered a cut in joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises, which he has called “hostile” toward Pyongyang. Pyongyang has not warmed to it. Kim Yo Jong, the leader’s sister and an influential figure in the leadership, said the drills remain provocative and aggressive even though they were shortened, and she rejected the idea that scaling them back is a significant gesture. She said she knew of no recent contact between Trump and her brother, but called the relationship between the two men “excellent.”
