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By John Feng
China Editor
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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has promised to arm his navy with nuclear weapons and build more naval bases to accommodate larger warships, in moves likely to deepen U.S. security concerns.
Kim's pledged on Tuesday came at the commissioning ceremony for the 5,000-ton destroyer Choe Hyon, the first of its class, at a shipyard in the western seaport of Nampo, the official Korean Central News Agency said the following day.
"It is rising into a full-fledged service equipped with strategic means as the program of equipping the navy with nuclear weapons is following its planned course unerringly," Kim was quoted as saying.
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North Korea formalized its ambition to become a nuclear power in 2023 by writing it into its constitution. Pyongyang has rejected calls from Washington and U.S.-allied Seoul for the full denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, putting Kim directly at odds with President Donald Trump's peace plan for the region.
Trump appeared to have sought the help of Chinese President Xi Jinping on the matter during his state visit to Beijing in May. A U.S. readout of the talks stated denuclearization as a shared goal, but China's summary of the summit included no such position.
Earlier this month, during a visit to a newly built nuclear enrichment facility, Kim vowed to expand North Korea's strategic forces exponentially.
He also revealed that North Korean nuclear scientists had doubled the output of enriched material in the last five years.
North Korea has at least 60 nuclear warheads, according to publicly available estimates, still well short of the Russian and U.S. inventories, which both exceed 5,000. But researchers believe North Korea has produced enough material for up to 90 warheads.
"I take Kim Jong Un and sister Kim Yo Jong at their words when they say they're not giving up their nukes. And I'm not sure how realistically committed Donald Trump still is to North Korea's denuclearization anyway," Sean King, senior vice president at the Park Strategies consultancy in New York, told Newsweek.
"I think the best for which America can now hope is to merely manage the problem. So long as the Kim regime's in power, Pyongyang's nukes are here to stay," King said.
North Korea announced the construction of Choe Hyon 18 months ago and launched it in April 2025. The second ship of the destroyer class, the Kang Kon, capsized the following month during a launch at the Hambuk shipyard in Chongjin on North Korea's east coast. It was later righted by engineers.
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Pyongyang will fund at least four Choe Hyon-class destroyers for the navy, but Kim wants larger and more powerful ships, including a class of 10,000-ton cruiser, he told sailors at the ceremony in Nampo.
“We can now affirm that there is no insurmountable technological barrier for us in building and launching destroyers and cruisers of different classes,” he said.
However, Kim added that the current lack of bases to moor large warships is a concern.
“In the past there has been no need for such a base,” Kim said, adding that now it is “an urgent, essential task to build modern naval bases.”
A navy boasting nuclear-powered submarines and an army equipped with hypersonic missiles have long been on Kim's wish list, alongside spy satellites and intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Frances Mao and Tony Phillips
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