North Korea just casually revised its constitution to automatically launch a nuclear strike if leader Kim Jong Un is assassinated, or if the country’s nuclear command-and-control system is placed in danger by hostile forces’ attacks.
The change was adopted during the first session of the 15th Supreme People’s Assembly in Pyongyang on March 22 and was disclosed this week by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, which briefed senior officials on the details.
The updated Article 3 of North Korea’s nuclear policy law states: “If the command-and-control system over the state’s nuclear forces is placed in danger by hostile forces’ attacks … a nuclear strike shall be launched automatically and immediately.”
South Korean intelligence officials said the revision codifies procedures for retaliatory nuclear attacks in the event that Kim is killed or incapacitated during an attack, Reuters reports.
The policy update comes months after the assassination of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior Iranian officials in U.S.-backed Israeli strikes in February 2026. Analysts have described those operations as a “wake-up call” for Pyongyang, highlighting the effectiveness of leadership-targeted strikes.
Professor Andrei Lankov of Kookmin University in Seoul told The Telegraph that the constitutional emphasis gives added weight to what may have been existing policy: “This may have been policy before, but it has added emphasis now it has been enshrined in the constitution. Iran was the wake-up call.”
The nuclear policy revision was adopted alongside broader changes to North Korea’s constitution, also passed in March and revealed earlier this week. Those amendments remove all references to unification with South Korea, add an explicit territorial clause defining the country’s borders (including with the Republic of Korea to the south), and formally state that command authority over nuclear forces rests with Kim Jong Un as chairman of the State Affairs Commission.
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