Captured from SIPRI website

By Park Si-soo

North Korea continues to expand its nuclear arsenal with 30-40 nuclear warheads in stock, says a Sweden-based research institute in its annual paper published on Monday (local time).

The North added 10 warheads to its nuclear weapon capacity in 2019 alone, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). It noted that the figures were "approximate" because the reclusive state didn't share details of its military power.

Established in 1966, SIPRI is an independent institute dedicated to research into international security, armaments, arms control and disarmament.

"North Korea continues to prioritize its military nuclear program as a central element of its national security strategy," SIPRI wrote in the paper.

Meanwhile, SIPRI said the nine nuclear-armed states ― the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea ― together possessed an estimated 13,400 nuclear weapons at the start of 2020. This marked a small decrease from 13,865 a year earlier, SIPRI estimated.

Around 3,720 of the nuclear weapons were deployed with operational forces and nearly 1,800 were in a state of high operational alert, it said.