North Korea: What to Know About Its Government and Nuclear Weapons History

*Updated on November 21 at 5:47 p.m.:

The tension between the United States and North Korea continues to escalate. On Tuesday, the U.S. Treasury Department announced it was imposing new sanctions on North Korea as part of the ongoing attempt to get the country to end its nuclear development program, Politico reported. The latest sanctions include one individual, 20 boats, and 13 entities, and include three Chinese companies said to have exported hundreds of millions of dollars worth of goods to North Korea, according to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin; they follow sanctions the U.S. imposed on eight North Korean banks and 26 individuals in September.

The move comes one day after President Donald Trump officially designated North Korea a state sponsor of terrorism, adding the country to a list former President George W. Bush removed it from in 2008. "Today the United States is designating North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism," Trump said in his announcement, as reported by CNN. "Should have happened a long time ago. Should have happened years ago." He noted that the country has "repeatedly" sponsored terrorist acts, including "assassinations on foreign soil," according to CNN.

North Korea joins countries such as Iran, Sudan, and Syria on the list, according to Politico.

Foreign leaders in the region, such as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, supported Trump's move, while Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang expressed hope for the two countries to "return to negotiations and to the right track to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue through dialogue and talks," according to the Global Times.

On Tuesday, North Korean state media published a new attack on Trump, though it didn't specifically cite the sanctions or the terrorism designation. "The hideous crimes committed by the lunatic president of the US are a blatant challenge to the dignity of the supreme leadership of the DPRK," the article said, according to CNN.

Previously...

The United States military announced that it will conduct an evacuation drill in South Korea from October 23 through October 27, the New York Times reported. According to a military statement, the "Courageous Channel" drill will help prepare American "service members and their families to respond to a wide range of crisis management events such as noncombatant evacuation and natural or man-made disasters." The same day the announcement was made, the U.S. and South Korea began a 10-day joint naval exercise in the waters on either side of the Korean Peninsula.

This isn't the first time the U.S. has conducted such an evacuation drill; and the military statement noted that it is a "routinely scheduled" exercise, and that "nonparticipants across the peninsula can expect little to no disruption of daily activities on and around military installation."

Still, the Times reported, given the escalating tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, the latest plans have South Koreans concerned that the U.S. is preparing for a possible war on the Korean Peninsula. But Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, commander of the United States Forces Korea, said the readiness is always necessary. “Although not directly tied to current geopolitical events, our forces must be ready in all areas,” he said, according to the Times. “This training is as important to readiness as our other routine events such as tank gunnery and fighter wing exercises.”

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, said on CNN's October 15 "State of the Union" that the U.S. will continue to resolve issues with North Korea diplomatically, and those efforts "will continue until the first bomb drops."

On September 25, North Korea's Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho reportedly said that a tweet published by President Donald Trump is a declaration of war, as the post stated that North Korea wouldn't "be around much longer" if Ri "echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man." Trump's mention of "rocket man" seemingly refers to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

"Last weekend Trump claimed that our leadership wouldn't be around much longer and declared a war on our country," Ri said, according to CNN. "Since the United States declared war on our country, we will have every right to make all self-defensive counter measures, including the right to shoot down the United States strategic bombers at any time even when they are not yet inside the aerospace border of our country." A State Department spokesperson told CNN the United States has not declared war on North Korea.

Several weeks earlier, on August 8, North Korea threatened nuclear war on the United States, promising to launch a missile attack against U.S. Pacific territory Guam and "turn the U.S. mainland into the theater of a nuclear war" at any sign of U.S. retaliation, CNN reported. These threats come after continued escalation between the U.S. and North Korea, including President Donald Trump's promise that he would unleash "fire and fury" on Pyongyang should the threats continue. On Friday, August 11, Trump said U.S. military "solutions" were in place and ready to respond to North Korea, should the country act "unwisely."

This all came after the United Nations passed a sanctions package against North Korea that may cost the country $1 billion each year in lost trade dollars, the Washington Post reported. North Korea said it would make the U.S. "pay dearly" as a result of its role in passing the sanctions. Following that promise, the country showed it had the capability to attach a nuclear warhead to one of the missiles it has been repeatedly testing — the same tests that sparked the UN sanctions. North Korea's specific threats against Guam came after two U.S. bombers, joined by South Korean and Japanese warplanes, flew over North Korea on August 7. On September 21, Trump passed an executive order imposing further sanctions on the country by penalizing any company or person doing business with North Korea by cutting off their access to the U.S. financial system, freezing their assets, or both, CNN reports.

Prior to these threats, North Korea continued testing weapons, launching four ballistic missiles at one time, three of which landed in Japanese waters. The action came less than a month after North Korea launched its first missile during Donald Trump’s presidency, which South Korea deemed a “show of force” against the new U.S. leader, according to The Guardian.

The recent actions are the latest in a decades-long history of tension between North Korea and the allied United States and South Korea. In order to better understand what’s happening now, here’s what you should know about North Korea and its displays of aggression.

It’s a separate country from South Korea.

And it has been since 1945, when World War II ended and Japan — which had ruled Korea (singular) since annexing the region in 1910 — surrendered. At that point, Soviet troops took military control of the northern part of the country, and U.S. troops took control of the south, with the initial goal of helping Korea establish postwar sovereignty. But it soon became apparent that the Soviets and the U.S. each had a very different vision for the region. While the U.S. urged the United Nations General Assembly to sanction elections and the establishment of a democratic government in the south (officially known as the Republic of Korea), Communism prevailed in the north, with Soviet-installed leader Kim Il Sung becoming the head of the new Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in 1948.

Soviet troops withdrew from the north in 1948, and U.S. troops withdrew from the south in 1949. The next year, South Korea declared independence, prompting North Korea to invade, which in turn sparked the Korean War. The war ended in 1953 with an armistice that called for a ceasefire and established a 2.5-mile-wide demilitarized zone that separates the countries to this day.

The country has been ruled by one family since its establishment.

After Kim Il Sung passed away in 1994, his son Kim Jong Il became the country’s leader. And when Kim Jong Il died in 2011, his son Kim Jong Un took over.

The three Kim dynasty leaders have been hailed as godlike figures by North Korean media and government. For instance, after Kim Il Sung died, a new calendar was introduced that declared 1912, the year of his birth, as year 1. (So in North Korea, the current year isn’t 2017; it’s 106.) The late leader is still considered the country’s “Eternal President” (successors are "supreme leaders"), while the late “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il is also considered the “eternal general secretary.” The current supreme leader, Kim Jong Un, has been hailed as “a great person born of heaven,” according to the BBC.

Although Kim Jong Un was technically reelected in 2014, elections in North Korea are mandatory, with ballots listing only one candidate option. Citizens simply vote yes or no; polling sites have a separate ballot box for “no” votes. According to Time, the elections are used primarily as a way to keep tabs on the population, and the government remains a totalitarian regime.

It exists largely in isolation and secrecy from the rest of the world.

Following the Korean War, Kim Il Sung introduced a philosophy of Juche (“self-reliance”), and since then the country has largely operated in secrecy from the rest of the world — so much so that it’s referred to as the “hermit kingdom.” North Korea allows only state-controlled media that broadcasts a steady stream of propaganda and positive reports about the government. Citizens have extremely limited access to the Internet, and the sites they can visit are determined by the government.

Citizens must obtain official permission to leave the country and face harsh punishments if they travel outside the borders without it.

Although American citizens are technically allowed to travel to North Korea, the U.S. Department of State advises against it, “due to the serious risk of arrest and long-term detention under North Korea’s system of law enforcement,” and the fact that the U.S. has no diplomatic or consular relations with North Korea, making it difficult to provide assistance to detained Americans.

Citizens are largely repressed, poverty and famine are extensive, and leaders have been accused of committing crimes against humanity.

The state-controlled media, limits on communications, and optionless voting aren’t the only signs of repression in North Korea. North Koreans must maintain one of 28 state-approved haircuts, electricity is completely shut off at night (and some homes receive only a few hours a day), and schoolchildren (and their families) have to provide their own desks, chairs, and even money for heat — and some of them are subjected to labor, producing goods for the government.

About half of North Korea’s 24 million people live in poverty, and the country has been suffering from a food crisis for decades, a result of the country’s self-reliant policy, uneven food distribution, sanctions, and natural disasters that have destroyed farmland. Although the international community has provided food aid to North Korea, that has slowed down since 2009, when the then–U.S. State Department director of policy planning said North Korea suspended the aid program. In 2011, Reuters reported that both the U.S. and South Korea stopped providing aid over concerns it wasn’t going to the intended recipients. In January 2017, the day before Donald Trump took office as president, the U.S. provided $1 million in humanitarian aid to North Korea for the first time since 2011, in the wake of a devastating typhoon.

A 2014 report from the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights detailed findings of “systematic, widespread, and gross human rights violations,” including crimes against humanity. According to the report, North Korean citizens have suffered murder, enslavement, imprisonment, starvation, sexual violence, and more at the hands of the country’s leaders.

It doesn’t have much in the way of diplomatic relations with other countries.

The United States and North Korea don’t have diplomatic relations, and that’s the case for most other countries and North Korea as well. Since the collapse of the Communist Soviet Union in the 1990s, China has been North Korea’s only major ally, but that relationship has suffered in recent years, as China started supporting U.N. sanctions imposed on North Korea for nuclear testing. The country’s other significant ally is Russia, which agreed to a “year of friendship” to further the two countries’ ties in 2015, though the following year Russia warned North Korea against continued nuclear threats.

North Korea has a long history of nuclear pursuits, tests, and threats.

Despite its impoverished state, North Korea has one of the largest armies in the world, with more than 1.2 million active soldiers and 7.7 million in reserve, and spends about one third of its income on the military. And the country has long threatened other states — primarily South Korea and the U.S. — with its might and capabilities.

North Korea joined the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), an agreement that states countries with nuclear weapons will work toward getting rid of them, and countries without nuclear weapons won’t acquire them, in 1985. But it didn’t stick. After the International Atomic Energy Agency accused North Korea of violating the NPT in the early 1990s, North Korea threatened to withdraw from the agreement; instead, in 1994, it signed an Agreed Framework with the U.S., vowing to freeze its nuclear program. North Korea didn’t actually do so, though: In 2002 (the same year then-president George W. Bush referred to North Korea, Iraq, and Iran as an “axis of evil” for building “weapons of mass destruction”), North Korea admitted to secretly developing a nuclear program, and in 2003, it officially withdrew from the NPT. A few months later, North Korea declared it had nuclear weapons.

The U.S., along with China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea, attempted once again to halt North Korea’s nuclear operations in what’s known as the Six-Party Talks. The talks began in 2003, and after the fourth round in 2005, North Korea agreed to abandon its nuclear weapons and programs and return to the NPT in exchange for energy aid from the other countries. But alas, no such thing happened: In 2006, North Korea conducted its first nuclear test, resulting in economic sanctions from the U.N. Further rounds of Six-Party Talks took place after that, but they ended in 2008, when North Korea refused to allow inspectors access to its suspected nuclear sites. In 2009, the country conducted its second nuclear test and was met with further U.N. sanctions.

In 2012, North Korea agreed to suspend its missile tests in exchange for U.S. food aid, but it also conducted multiple rocket launches that same year and in 2013 went through with a third nuclear test.

In early 2016, North Korea claimed it tested a hydrogen bomb (which is more dangerous than an atomic bomb) that could “wipe out the whole territory of the U.S. all at once.” It conducted a fifth nuclear test in September 2016 and tested more than 20 ballistic missiles throughout the course of last year.

And that brings us to 2017 and the recent launch of four ballistic missiles, which landed within 200 miles of Japan’s coastline. The launch coincided with the U.S. and South Korea’s annual joint military exercise, Foal Eagle, a common retaliation response on behalf of North Korea. “Every year this time, they try to do something to defy the exercises,” Bruce Bennett, a North Korea expert at the Rand Corporation, in California, told the Washington Post. But both the U.S.–South Korean military exercises and the North Korean responses have become increasingly extensive and threatening. Last week the Korean Central News Agency issued a statement warning that the country is prepared to “launch its merciless military counter-actions” and use its “treasured nuclear sword of justice” if opposing forces fire “even a single shell” into North Korea’s sovereign territory.

It’s certainly frightening, considering Kim Jong Un recently announced that his country is close to testing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the U.S. Although officials don’t believe the most recently fired missile was an ICBM, experts think it’s only a matter of time before North Korea creates one, despite Donald Trump’s tweeting, “It won’t happen!”

What’s next?

The U.S. and South Korea just began the deployment of a missile-detection and defense system, THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense), in South Korea; and according to The New York Times, the U.S. may call for more systems of the sort in addition to looking into ways to freeze the Kim family’s assets and exploring preemptive military strike options. Before Trump took office in January, the Pentagon deployed a sea-based radar to detect long-range missiles coming from North Korea.

Although we don’t know exactly what Trump and his administration will do next, U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner assured us the country is at the ready. He recently stated: “We remain prepared — and will continue to take steps to increase our readiness — to defend ourselves and our allies from attack, and are prepared to use the full range of capabilities at our disposal against this growing threat.”

Related: North Korea Just Conducted Its Biggest Nuclear Test