North Korea spends billions on developing nukes as people starve

Seoul. North Korea has spent somewhere between $1.1 and $1.6 billion developing nuclear weapons over the past 50 years, according to recent calculations.

It will likely cost the regime another $160 million to conduct another nuclear test. According to data from the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, the North has spent up to $1.6 billion developing nuclear weapons, including six nuclear tests since the 1970s.

It spent $600 to $700 million building a uranium refinery in Pyongsan, nuclear fuel manufacturing and fuel rod reprocessing facilities, a nuclear reactor and a light-water reactor at Yongbyon, and $200 to $400 million making centrifuges and building a uranium enrichment facility. 

KIDA estimates that the $1.6 billion the regime has squandered would have been enough to buy 1.41 to 2.05 million tonnes of rice or 2.82 to 4.1 million tonnes of corn. This is equivalent to four years' worth of food for the entire North Korean population given that the North is 860,000 tonnes of food short this year alone, according to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

The regime is expected to conduct three or four more nuclear tests in the future. Each test is estimated at $110 to $160 million, bringing the total cost to $440 to $640 million.

North Korea declared itself to be a nuclear weapons state early September 2022 in breach of United Nations Security Council resolutions. The country's leader Kim Jong-un called the decision "irreversible" and ruled out the possibility of any talks on denuclearisation, according to the country’s news agency, KCNA.