Trump Says North Korea Has 57 Nuclear Weapons, Below Seoul's 80-120 Estimate
US President Donald Trump told reporters on August 19 that Kim Jong-un has "57 very powerful nuclear weapons", four months after citing 45 - a figure he did not source, and one well below the range South Korea's defense ministry says it works from.
US President Donald Trump said on August 19 that North Korea holds "57 very powerful nuclear weapons", the second figure he has attached to the arsenal this year and one no US administration has ever published officially. He did not say where the number came from, or whether it counted assembled warheads, deployed weapons or the fissile material Pyongyang has produced.
Trump made the remark during a press availability at the White House, tying it to his own relationship with Kim Jong-un. "The fact that I get along with him - that's a good thing, not a bad thing. He has 57 very powerful nuclear weapons," he told reporters. "They should have never allowed it. If I were president, I wouldn't have allowed it. But he's got them." Asked whether he expected to meet Kim later this year, he answered, "Yeah, I will be," declining to give a date or to say whether the two are exchanging letters.
The comments came a day after The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump has been pressing aides to arrange a meeting, potentially during a November trip to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen. In a later exchange the same day, Trump declined to say whether North Korea's denuclearization remained his objective, a goal his administration had reaffirmed earlier this year.
The figure sits low against the published estimates, and above his own previous one: in April, Trump said North Korea had 45 nuclear weapons. South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back told lawmakers on August 20 that Seoul generally works from a range of 80 to 120, while cautioning that an exact count cannot be established. Lee Sang-kyu of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses put the arsenal at 127 to 150 last year, reasoning from estimated plutonium and highly enriched uranium output. In April, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi described "a few dozen warheads" and a "very serious increase" in production capability, citing renewed activity at the Yongbyon reactor and its reprocessing line.
The North Korea nuclear profile on this site follows the Federation of American Scientists, which estimates 60 assembled warheads plus fissile material for perhaps 30 more - a stockpile that has more than doubled since 2022, when FAS assessed 25. North Korea withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 2003, tested six devices between 2006 and 2017, and wrote its nuclear status into its constitution in 2023. It remains the smallest of the nine nuclear-armed states by warhead count, and ranks 27th in the global military power ranking.
Delivery is the harder question. The liquid-fueled Hwasong-15 and Hwasong-17, joined by the solid-fueled Hwasong-18 and Hwasong-19, give intercontinental range on paper, though reentry-vehicle performance has never been demonstrated in a full-range test. The sea-based leg remains experimental, built around a single Sinpo-class boat.
No summit has been announced, and Pyongyang has not confirmed that arrangements are underway. Kim Yo-jong, the North Korean leader's sister, this week called the scaled-back US role in the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise with South Korea "unworthy of comment", while saying her brother retains "good memories and feelings" about Trump and that the relationship remains "excellent".
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