North Korea
Of all the modern nuclear threats and challenge America faces today, North Korea could easily be the most most imminent threat American ever faced because of its rapid nuclear weapons and missile development program, and its ability to strike the United States with its missiles.
During the cold war, North Korea was a concern for the United States as it revceived information about information about nuclear reactors. During the 1960's and 1970's, North Korea was eager to gain knowledge of nuclear reactors, and with the help of the Soviet Union and China, North Korea gained its new nuclear reactor. Though the motive is unclear, speculations state that “insecurity fed by the American nuclear threat may have spurred North Korea to try to develop nuclear arms in the early 1960s. In 1963 it asked the Soviet Union for help in building the bomb. In 1964 Soviet and North Korea experts, some of them Soviet-trained, set up a nuclear research facility at Yongbyon” (Sigal 20).
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At first the United States and most countries were not alerted by North Korea's nuclear energy development program as this development seemed that North Korea was only interested in using nuclear energy to generate electricity. However, North Korea showed its interest in Nuclear weapons in the late 1980’s when North Korea refused to limit its nuclear reactor construction even though there were pressure from other countries. The discovery was made when “in 1988 U.S. intelligence detected construction at Yongbyon of what it later concluded was a reprocessing plant to extract plutonium-239 from spent reactor fuel. When fully operational, the plant was assessed to have the capacity to reprocess spent fuel from all three North Korean reactors - yielding 30 bombs’ worth of plutonium a year” (Sigal 22). This move by the North Korean government alerted the world that North Korea was now capable of self production of nuclear weapons. It was apparent that it was only a matter of time that North Korea would have its first nuclear weapon soon.
During the 1990's North Korea further developed their nuclear weapons and in 2006 North Korea tested its first atomic bomb, which marked the beginning of North Korea’s emerging as a nuclear threat to the United States and the World. This event coincided with George W. Bush's War against Terrorism which further added the urgency of the situation. North Korea continuously refused to give up their nuclear weapons, and further developed their missiles which could reach Hawaii and possibly California.
Recently, on June 12, 2018, President Trump and Kim Jong Un have agreed on a nuclear weapon reduction deal of North Korea during their summit in Singapore. However with both countries not able to find a deal in the Vietnam summit, it is unclear how North Korea would continue its nuclear program in the future (Abrams).
Links to North Korea News Articles
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https://thebulletin.org/2019/04/what-russia-thinks-about-north-koreas-nuclear-weapons/
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