North Korea forged ahead with its missile programme in 2022 and took steps toward resuming testing of nuclear bombs, as world events including the COVID pandemic and war fractured the already tenuous international pressure against it.
The country acknowledged its first COVID-19 outbreak in May, prolonging already stringent border closures and other anti-pandemic measures, blocking international engagement and causing economic woes, but doing little to slow its weapons tests.
The true extent of COVID there remains unconfirmed amid a lack of testing and independent monitoring.
This year provided the clearest evidence yet that North Korea now regards itself as a permanent nuclear weapons power and that Pyongyang has no intention of engaging the United States in denuclearisation talks, said Evans Revere, a former U.S. diplomat.
"We are in dangerous and uncharted territory when it comes to the North Korean threat," he said. "The possibility of denuclearising North Korea has all but disappeared."
Reuters
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