With Kim it’s nothing more than a moving sale. North Korea would sell just about anything to anyone, so in that sense they’re a very large proliferation threat.
The thing that has constrained the threat from North Korea in recent years has been that only Syria seemed interested in developing a North Korean-like reactor. Everybody else was going the uranium route that the Khan network had promoted.
But now that North Korea is in that business, I’m quite worried that North Korea’s procurement network will be put at the service of other countries. And Iran, released from the nuclear race block by Obama and Clinton by the unauthorized treaty with Iran, has received a bunch of funds from the formerly frozen accounts all over the world and has admitted to being in the market for the race again. And Kim hasn’t told the truth in the last 20 years.
Here is an excellent article from National Re4view on the topic:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/08/un-report-north-korea-syria-iran-relationship-extensive-long-standing/
rwood
The media and various "experts" keep talking about NK and Iran as if they are totally separate issues - not really. There's a whole axis of bad actors in play, which ultimately leads back to China itself. The Norks are a proxy storefront for China to buy, sell, trade and steal through, keeping Chicom fingerprints directly off such "transactions", while providing a buffer territory and foil for use between them and the rest of Pacific Asia. NK is also a good front for the Chicoms to live test their missile tech projects through. And nuclear - the last known official nuke weapon test by the Chicoms was on July 29, 1996, but you can bet Chicom scientists were all over if not actually running the blasting that went on in Norkland. So the Chicoms have to weight the choice of relieving themselves from the liability of supporting a economically draining welfare state versus that of greatly diminishing the viability of, if not losing, a strategic proxy asset. MAYBE Trump has managed to flip the script and transition NK into a liability headache for China, and there is no other way out now but to address it.