Publications and Analyses

The latest publications and analyses from Open Nuclear Network

Can Humanity Achieve a Century of Nuclear Peace?

While the world has avoided large-scale nuclear war, questions remain about the role of chance versus policy choices in preventing such events. This study systematically assesses expert beliefs about the probability of a nuclear catastrophe by 2045, the centenary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

October 29, 2024

Fissile Material and Nuclear Force Structure in North Korea

ONN Senior Analyst Sarah Laderman, Research Assistant Nikita Degtyarev, Analyst Tianran Xu, Research Assistant Elin Bergner and Research and Analysis Manager Marcy R Fowler authored a report "Fissile Material and Nuclear Force Structure in North Korea" for The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI), providing an in-depth analysis of North Korea's approach to its nuclear force structure.

October 01, 2024

DPRK Nuclear Weapons Development - Literature Review

There exists no recent comprehensive literature review related to the DPRK’s nuclear weapons development capabilities and associated strategy. This paper seeks to fill this gap by compiling and summarising all major published analyses released since 2017.

August 13, 2024

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Jee Abbey Lee

September 17, 2020

[Engagement Network Series - 2 of 2] South Korea's Chief Nuke Negotiator on How Nuclear Talks with the DPRK Could Resume

ROK chief negotiator at the Six Party Talks, Amb. Chun Yung-woo, has joined the ONN Engagement Network. In this two part series, he sits down with Jee Lee to discuss approaches to engage North Korea and reminisces about what he has learned in previous negotiations.

Jee Abbey Lee

September 09, 2020

[Engagement Network Series - 1 of 2] South Korea's Chief Nuke Negotiator on Decoding Pyongyang

Clayton Besaw

August 07, 2020

Nuclear (e)motives: The KCNA's English Language Output and Sentiment Patterns Regarding the Topic of Nuclear Weapons

Breaking down North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) output in English, we find a clear bifurcation in the pattern of language used when it comes to the discussion of texts related to the topic of nuclear weapons.

Matthew Frank

July 27, 2020

Electoral Victory Forecasting: a Structural Model for Global Election Predictions

The field of election forecasting has become immensely popular in recent years, becoming so ubiquitous that some studies have argued election forecasts themselves can influence voters' perceptions and behavior in elections. While there is some criticism that election forecasting can contribute to a...

Ankit Panda

July 07, 2020

Why the "Old Normal" Along the Sino-Indian Border Can No Longer Stand

China's fait accompli in Eastern Ladakh has disintegrated more than two decades of bilateral mechanisms and understandings

By the time 20 Indian soldiers had died and a still-unknown number of Chinese soldiers faced casualties after a high-altitude melee in the normally obscure Galwan Valley on June 15, India and China were already well into a border crisis. The events of June 15 simply had the effect of sharply raising...

Tianran Xu

June 30, 2020

Pyongyang's Bomb Is Not As Advanced As You May Think, But It Can Get Scarier

This article tries to give a general idea of the technological level of North Korean nuclear weapon’s miniaturization in a bid to better understand the nuclear threat North Korea poses to the region and the globe. Through examining limited open-source materials the author tries to establish a rough ...

Jee Abbey Lee

June 25, 2020

Explainer: Why "Leafleting" to North Korea Ruffles Feathers

Throughout the month of June, North Korea has shown increased hostility toward South Korea. Some of these efforts include re-installing loudspeakers along the Demilitarised Zone at one point before removing them, blowing up a joint liaison office in its territory and announcing plans for a massive a...

Jeffrey Glenn Lewis

June 03, 2020

South Korea's Hyunmoo-4 and Increasing Missile Capabilities across Northeast Asia

While North Korea gets most of the attention when it comes to the subject of missile proliferation on the Korean Peninsula, South Korea too has a substantial missile program. The public received a rare glimpse into South Korea’s missile programs in May, when South Korean news outlets reported on a t...

Clayton Besaw

May 22, 2020

Unpacking Russian Presidential Speech Patterns with Machine Learning

Natural language processing and topic modeling specifically have proliferated in accessibility over the past decade. Topic modeling algorithms such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) are now considered a type of "work-horse" tool for uncovering patterns (topics) in large sets of text data.

Melissa Hanham

Jaewoo Shin

May 21, 2020

Ethics in the Age of OSINT Innocence

Increased availability and lower cost of satellite imagery has made it accessible to civil society in recent years. While universities, think tanks, and nongovernmental organizations are racing ahead to incorporate this form of open source intelligence (OSINT) into their regular research work, there...

Jeffrey Glenn Lewis

May 14, 2020

Monitoring Iran's Solid Rocket Program from Space

On April 22, Iran placed a small satellite in orbit. The space launch was notable for two reasons. First, the launch was conducted by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC), not Iran's civilian space program. Second, the rocket used a new solid-propellant second stage (the Salman), which th...

Laura Rockwood

Veronika Bedenko

May 01, 2020

Nuclear Risk Reduction and COVID-19: What One Existential Threat Can Teach Us about Another

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, competing international security priorities including arms control, nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament, are taking a back seat. The delayed response to COVID-19 suggests some troubling analogies to the current state of affairs in the nuclear arena.

Threat similarities between nuclear weapons and COVID-19

Tianran Xu

Jaewoo Shin

April 23, 2020

A Tale of Two Missiles: Analysis of KCNA Reports on DPRK's KN-23 and KN-24 Short-Range Ballistic Missiles

Since May 2019, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has repeatedly tested two new solid-fuel short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM). Unlike liquid SRBMs such as the SCUD-B/C, the KN-23 and KN-24 missile systems have different designs, means of transportation, and launch methods. However,...

Tianran Xu

March 23, 2020

Analysis of the KN-25 Multiple Rocket Launcher System after the 9 March 2020 DPRK Test

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea launched at least two "super-large calibre" multiple rocket launcher rounds into the Sea of Japan or East Sea on 9 March 2020. It is the sixth confirmed test launch of the system, with a total of at least 12 such rockets having been launched since it was dev...

Melissa Hanham

November 15, 2019

Image Analysis of North Korea's ICBMs for Countermeasures

While there is insufficient evidence to prove that North Korea is pursuing countermeasures or penetration aids (penaids), the lack of evidence certainly does not prove that they are not.

Melissa Hanham

November 15, 2019

North Korea's Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles & Countermeasures

Every state that has developed intercontinental ballistic missiles has considered how to deliver a nuclear payload to its target without interference.

Melissa Hanham

November 15, 2019

Countering Ballistic Missile Defence: North Korea's Approach

North Korea's rapid development of missile capabilities has prioritized technological advancement, range, and payload delivery in order to achieve Kim Jong Un’s goal of delivering a nuclear weapon to the US mainland.

Stanley Center for Peace and Security

Open Nuclear Network

July 01, 2019

The Gray Spectrum

Ethical Decision Making with Geospatial and Open Source Analysis

In July 2019, the Stanley Center for Peace and Security and Open Nuclear Network convened a workshop with nonproliferation experts, open source intelligence analysts, journalists and stakeholders from satellite imagery firms. The workshop asked participants to explore ethical challenges with their w...

Exhaust plume from a North Korean short-range ballistic missile test