North Korea is 'Preparing' for War With Nuclear Weapons Buildup

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is "seriously preparing" for war as it builds its nuclear weapons arsenal, according to an expert on Korean history.

After decades of international pressure attempting to stop its development of nuclear weapons, North Korea announced during the administration of former President George W. Bush that it was conducting nuclear tests and had weapons. The country now has an arsenal that includes an estimated 35 to 63 warheads, according to the Institute for Science and International Security.

In an interview published by The Financial Times on Thursday, Kookmin University history professor Andrei Lankov said that Kim had been emboldened to build the nuclear arsenal due to Western leaders failing to take advantage of earlier opportunities to pressure the regime, wrongly believing that the nuclear program was not "a realistic threat."

Lankov, who specializes in Korean studies, argued that "the only way" to interpret the North Korean focus on building more nuclear weapons is that Kim is planning to mount a "conquest" of South Korea as part of "another round" of the Korean War. He said that Kim's ambitions would become clear within the next 15 years.

"The best, or perhaps even the only, way to explain the direction of Kim's nuclear weapons development is that the North Koreans are seriously preparing for a second round of the Korean war and conquest of the South," Lankov said. "It is a threat that will start to become more and more apparent over the next 10 or 15 years."

Newsweek reached out for comment to the North Korean embassy in London via email on Thursday.

Kim announced during a speech in September that he plans to "push ahead with the work for exponentially boosting the production of nuclear weapons and diversifying the nuclear strike means," as part of a "new Cold War" that pits the United States against North Korea and its allies Russia and China, according to the Associated Press.

U.S.-North Korean hostilities have increased this year, with Pyongyang officials threatening to retaliate over purported incursions in or near its territory on multiple occasions. North Korea threatened to launch a nuclear strike on the U.S. in July over a nuclear submarine arriving in Busan, South Korea.

Although the extent of North Korea's ability to strike the U.S. directly is unclear, it has tested intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that could potentially reach across the Pacific. Details on the weapons that are in the country's nuclear arsenal are scarce due to the secrecy of the Kim regime.

However, the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States released a report last month that concluded, "North Korea continues to expand and diversify its nuclear forces, increasing the threat to U.S. Allies and forces in theater, and posing a greater threat to the U.S. and its Allies.

"North Korea is on pace to deploy nuclear-armed intercontinental range missiles in sufficient numbers that could potentially challenge U.S. homeland ground-based ballistic missile defenses," the report added.