Pyongyang continuing to build strategic weapon capabilities, says chief of UK Forces Korea

North Korea is continuing with its strategic weapon development and is becoming increasingly isolated, the commander of US Forces Korea has warned.

Speaking during a Senate Armed Services Committee posture hearing in Washington, DC, on 10 April 2025, US Army General Xavier T Brunson said that in 2024 North Korea launched 47 ballistic missiles while focusing on advancing its cruise missile and hypersonic glide vehicle research and development programmes.

“In the coming year we expect [the North Koreans] to further develop hypersonic and multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicle [MIRV] capabilities to complete [their] goals,” he said.

Gen Brunson added that North Korea is continuing to build its nuclear weapons programme and that the country boasts a 1.3 million-strong military force that is being modernised and augmented by Russia.

Noting that North Korean munitions and troops are also being exported to Russia for use in the Ukraine War, Gen Brunson said this demonstrates North Korea’s ability to provide external support to other countries while simultaneously advancing its own capabilities.

He added that North Korea also poses an increasingly sophisticated cyber threat and has recently stolen crypto currencies worth approximately USD 1.5 billion (EUR 1.32 billion).

Recent reports also document the extent to which North Korea is building up its naval capabilities. Citing analysis by the Washington, DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies and satellite imagery provided by Maxar Technologies and Planet Labs, a 14 April CNN report detailed how North Korea is currently building a warship in its Nampo shipyard that would be double the size of any other vessel in its inventory. The ship, which is around 140 m long and thus the largest warship manufactured in North Korea, is believed to be a guided missile frigate. Multiple observers have suggested that provision of the vessel’s missile system technology could be a Russian quid pro quo for Pyongyang’s support for Russia in the Ukraine war.

Also possibly part of that Russia quid pro quo is a nuclear-powered submarine currently under construction in North Korea, alongside which North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was photographed on 8 March 2025 in images released by North Korea state media.

Meanwhile, Gen Brunson said that Kim has shifted from any focus on the reunification of North and South Korea to more strongly reinforcing North Korean sovereignty.

“This change is evidenced by the hardening of [North Korea’s] southern border, the rejection of reunification discussions and the destruction of unification monuments and buildings,” he said.

Asked whether everyday North Koreans are cognisant of their oppression by the current regime under Kim, Gen Brunson pointed to the North Korean troops sent to Ukraine, who he characterised as “absolutely, dyed-in-the-wool ideologues who are tied to – and believe in – that regime”.

Gen Brunson testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that it would be unwise to reduce the US military presence on the Korean Peninsula in the face of North Korea continuing to develop its conventional and nuclear weapon programmes.

Reducing the force would be problematic, Gen Brunson told the committee, noting that what U. Forces Korea provides “is the potential to impose cost in the East Sea to Russia, the potential to impose cost in the West Sea to China and to continue to deter against North Korea as it currently stands”.