The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a Swedish think tank, estimates that North Korea has assembled approximately 50 nuclear warheads and possesses enough fissile material to produce up to 40 more.
According to a report by Radio Free Asia (RFA), SIPRI’s 2025 Yearbook, released on June 15, maintained its previous year’s assessment, stating that North Korea has likely built around 50 warheads and is continuing to produce additional fissile material. The institute also projected that the country’s nuclear arsenal could grow further in the coming years.
This projection follows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s statement at the 6th Plenary Meeting of the 8th Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea in late 2022, where he announced plans to expand the country’s nuclear warhead stockpile exponentially.
Other institutions have made similar assessments. In May, the U.S. Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported that North Korea had likely assembled about 50 warheads and produced enough fissile material to construct as many as 90.
However, estimates from South Korea’s Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA) are notably higher. In a January 2023 report, KIDA projected that North Korea may already possess 80 to 90 nuclear warheads and that the figure could rise to as many as 166 by 2030.
Likewise, a joint report published in October 2023 by South Korea’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies and the RAND Corporation in the United States suggested that North Korea could be aiming for a stockpile of 300 to 500 nuclear warheads, with the potential to reach 300 by around 2030.
SIPRI also estimated the global stockpile of nuclear warheads at 12,241 as of January 2024.
Dan Smith, Director of SIPRI, expressed concern about a growing and increasingly volatile global nuclear arms race, warning of the heightened risk of unintended atomic conflict.
