OPEN LETTER: To Kim Jong-un — June 25, 2026 and the Anniversary of a War That Never Ended

Introduction: Mr. Kim, You Chose This Day to Display Your Weapons

June 25, the Anniversary of an Invasion the World Has Not Forgotten

Mr. Kim Jong-un, you chose June 25, 2026 to oversee your weapons tests. This was no accident. On June 25, 1950, your political predecessors launched their tanks toward the 38th parallel, triggering a war that killed 5 million people and divided a peninsula for generations. Seventy-six years later, you fire your cannons over that same territory to remind the world — and your own people — that you have not abandoned the Kim family's dream of domination. This is coded political communication, and it is received.

What Your June 25 Tests Say to Seoul, Tokyo and Washington

This letter is not a plea. I am not asking you to abandon your weapons — I know you will not. It is a letter of contextualization: here is what your actions mean for the rest of the world, and here is what you risk by continuing on this path. You oversee in person 24-tube 240mm rocket launchers, a tactical ballistic missile with special payload, and a 155mm self-propelled howitzer. These weapons do not defend North Korea. They terrorize civilians in Seoul, 50 kilometers from your border.

The Weapons Displayed on June 25: An Arsenal of Terrifying Precision

The 24-Tube Launcher and the Saturation of South Korean Defenses

The test of the 24-tube 240mm rocket launcher — whose range now reaches 90 kilometers with autonomous precision guidance — is particularly significant. This configuration can saturate in minutes an area equivalent to several neighborhoods of a major city. The newly added autonomous precision — documented by experts from the Sejong Institute in Seoul — means these rockets are no longer simple indiscriminate terror weapons: they can target specific infrastructure, fuel depots, electrical stations, communications nodes.

The Tactical Ballistic Missile with Special Payload

The tactical ballistic missile with special payload presented during this test represents what Professor Lim Eul-chul of Kyungnam University calls a demonstration of tactical nuclear strike capability. Official North Korean imagery shows a missile capable of hitting airfields, ports and electrical installations in the forward combat zone. The designation of "special payload" is North Korean diplomatic language for describing a potential delivery capability for non-conventional weapons.

Professor Lim observes that this presentation corresponds to a doctrine of integrated tactical nuclear strike within frontline units — a capability that, if deployed, would considerably shorten nuclear decision timelines and increase the risk of accidental or unauthorized use during a conventional escalation.

The 155mm Self-Propelled Howitzer: Modernized Conventional Warfare

A 65-Kilometer Range That Changes the Geography of Conflict

The 155mm self-propelled howitzer tested on June 25 reaches a range of 65 kilometers — enough to strike from protected positions in North Korean territory targets within the urbanized zones of the Seoul metropolitan area, which is home to 25 million people, half of South Korea's population. This capability is the reason any conflict on the Korean peninsula would be immediately catastrophic for civilians, regardless of the military outcome.

The Modernization of North Korean Artillery: A Priority Program

The modernization of North Korean artillery, accelerated since 2022, benefits from an indirect technology transfer with Russia: North Korean technicians sent to Ukraine to observe Russian artillery operations have returned with valuable information on guidance systems, precision munitions and employment tactics. This learning-by-doing program — in exchange for the 155mm ammunition that Pyongyang supplies to Moscow for the war in Ukraine — represents a significant technological gain for your conventional arsenal.

North Korea has delivered, according to Western estimates, more than 3 million shells to Russia since 2023 — a contribution that has substantially sustained Russian firepower in Ukraine. In return, you receive technologies, spare parts for your space program, and the assurance of a Russian veto at the Security Council against any resolution targeting you.

Military Cooperation Between Pyongyang and Moscow: What It Says About You

North Korean Soldiers in Ukraine — The Broken Taboo

North Korean soldiers have been deployed in Ukraine alongside Russian forces since autumn 2024 — a fact confirmed by American, South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence, and by prisoner testimony. This decision, unprecedented since the Korean War, constitutes a major doctrinal break: North Korea, which claims military self-sufficiency (Juche), sends its soldiers to die for a foreign country. Your officers return with real combat lessons that your military schools could never have provided.

The Price Paid by North Korean Soldiers

South Korean and Ukrainian intelligence estimates suggest that North Korean casualties in Ukraine exceed 2,000 killed and several thousand wounded since November 2024. These soldiers — recruited in a context of total information control, most likely unaware of where they were going and why — paid the price of your alliance with Moscow. They are not martyrs. They are victims of their own government's diplomacy, sent to die in a foreign war that was probably never explained to them.

Your people, Mr. Kim, pay the cost of your ambitions in lives and famine simultaneously. The resources devoted to this armament program — rocket launchers, ballistic missiles, nuclear programs — are resources diverted from an economy whose GDP per capita is estimated at under $1,800 per year, according to the rare available data.

North Korean Nuclear Doctrine: What You Have Changed Since 2022

The September 2022 Law: First Use Authorized

In September 2022, you promulgated a law authorizing the first use of nuclear weapons under specific conditions — notably if command forces were threatened with annihilation. This law constituted a fundamental doctrinal shift: it transformed North Korea's nuclear program from a deterrent held in reserve into a system integrated into operational planning. The presumed deployment of special-payload ballistic missiles in frontline units confirms this doctrinal evolution.

What the First-Use Doctrine Means for the Peninsula

North Korea's first-use doctrine, if real and not just strategic communication, means that any conventional conflict on the Korean peninsula now carries a risk of nuclear escalation from the very first hours. The United States Forces Korea (USFK), with 28,500 soldiers, and the South Korean Armed Forces, one of the most professional armies in Asia, are direct targets in this doctrine. And the civilians of Seoul, Busan, Incheon — they are too.

That is why joint American-South Korean exercises were intensified in 2025-2026, including for the first time simulations of defense against a North Korean tactical nuclear strike. You pushed your adversaries to prepare for the unthinkable. And this preparation, in turn, feeds your narrative of existential threat that justifies your program.

China, Your Ambivalent Patron

Beijing Between Protection and Irritation

China is your ultimate protector — its Security Council veto has shielded you from harsher sanctions for decades. But Beijing is increasingly irritated by your provocations: every ballistic test draws the United States closer to Japan and South Korea, reinforces American military presence in the region, and justifies the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea — a system Beijing sees as a direct threat to its own security. Your missiles serve as a marketing argument for American military presence that China wants to reduce.

The Limits of Chinese Dependence

China accounts for over 90 percent of your foreign trade. Your economy depends on Beijing for fuel, food, industrial parts and currency. This absolute dependence is your structural vulnerability — if Beijing one day decided to turn off the tap, your regime would not survive six months. You know it. China knows it. And it is precisely this mutual knowledge that structures a relationship of uncomfortable interdependence where you can provoke, but not too much, and where Beijing can threaten, but not too much.

The visit by a senior CCP official to Pyongyang in April 2026 — whose details remain confidential — was interpreted by peninsula analysts as a clear message: repeated provocations are not in the common interest. Your June 25 tests, five weeks later, suggest you did not fully absorb that message.

What Ukraine Teaches Us About Regimes That Flee Reality

Putin and Kim: Two Systems That Survive Through Threats

Vladimir Putin and you share a similar political structure: regimes whose legitimacy rests on the permanent threat of an external enemy, on the repression of all internal opposition, and on the conviction that military force compensates for the lack of democratic legitimacy. Putin invaded Ukraine thinking the West would quickly capitulate. Four years later, Kyiv holds, Russia is economically impoverished, and Moscow has lost several hundred thousand soldiers for limited territorial gains.

Ukrainian Resistance as a Message to Pyongyang

Ukraine resists because it has democratic legitimacy, a population united behind Volodymyr Zelensky, and Western allies who chose not to capitulate to intimidation. This model of resistance — a people, a legitimate leader, a coalition — is precisely what you fear most: the demonstration that brute force is not enough against a real popular will. South Korea, for its part, possesses all of these elements.

Mr. Kim, North Korea needs peace more than South Korea does. Your economy is devastated. Your people suffer. Your nuclear program has earned you the most complete international isolation any state has ever endured. The economic model of your southern neighbor — among the most sophisticated in the world with a GDP per capita of $35,000 — is living proof that the Korean peninsula can prosper. If only you would let it.

What I Ask of You — Not Out of Naivety, But Out of Duty

A Way Out Exists — You Refuse to See It

Negotiations exist. Diplomatic channels exist — through Switzerland, Sweden, and even through Beijing. The inter-Korean dialogue mechanism, suspended since 2019, could be reopened if you signaled a minimal willingness to engage. No one is asking you to disarm unilaterally tomorrow morning. They are simply asking you to stop escalating, to let humanitarian aid in, and to answer phone calls from Seoul. These three minimal gestures would open a space that does not exist as long as you are testing missiles on June 25.

History Will Judge This Regime

History does not remember regimes that built the largest armies. It remembers those who chose peace when they could have chosen war. Mikhail Gorbachev opened the USSR and returned freedom to half of Europe. The world saluted him — including his former adversaries. You could be that Korean leader who chose dialogue and reconciliation over threats and isolation. This is not naivety — it is history. And it repeats itself, for those who read it.

Conclusion: June 25, 2026 and What It Says About the Future

A War Anniversary Used as a Platform for Power

You chose the 76th anniversary of the start of the Korean War to show your weapons. This choice says everything about your relationship to history: for you, it is an argument for legitimacy, a propaganda weapon, a mirror in which you see yourself as the continuer of a historical mission. But history is also a merciless judge — and it has already rendered its verdict on regimes that chose force over the people. They all end the same way.

The World Has Changed — Your Regime Has Not

The world of 2026 is not the world of 1950. Alliances are stronger, international surveillance more intense, and the resilience capacity of democracies under threat — Ukraine is proof of this — is far greater than your military planners anticipated. Your 24-tube launchers, your tactical missiles and your 65-kilometer howitzers are formidable instruments of terror. But they will not resolve the food crisis striking your northern provinces, nor the energy shortage plunging Pyongyang into darkness for several hours a day. True national security, Mr. Kim, is not measured in missiles. It is measured by the prosperity of your people.

Signed Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency box

Format and method

This open letter is a journalistic opinion genre that directly addresses a public actor on their actions and consequences. It does not claim impartiality — it takes a position. The facts cited (June 25 tests, weapons ranges, profile of Prof. Lim Eul-chul, economic figures, North Korean military casualties in Ukraine) are drawn from verifiable open sources cited at the foot of the article. No classified information was used.

Editorial positioning

The columnist firmly condemns the North Korean armament program and the Kim regime. He nonetheless acknowledges that unilateral denuclearization is illusory under current conditions and that only a gradual diplomatic approach can lead to a reduction of tensions on the Korean peninsula.

Sources

Primary sources

US News — Kim Jong-un Oversees Weapons Tests, KCNA Reports — June 25, 2026

Reuters — North Korea Tests Weapons on 76th Anniversary of Korean War — June 25, 2026

KCNA (Korean Central News Agency) — Official communiqués on June 25, 2026 tests

Secondary sources

38 North — Analysis of North Korean Weapons Tests of June 25 — June 2026

Kyungnam University — Prof. Lim Eul-chul on North Korean Tactical Nuclear Doctrine — 2026

CSIS Korea Chair — North Korea-Russia Weapons Cooperation — 2026