# COLUMN: Seoul, 30 million citizens under the direct threat of Kim Jong Un's new weapons

> Very few metropolises in the world have 30 million people living 50 kilometres or less from a border armed to the teeth by a regime that has never signed a peace treaty. Seoul and the greater capital metropolitan area of South Korea are among them. Since June 25, 2026 — the 76th

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Column
- Published: 2026-06-27
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/seoul-30-millions-de-citoyens-sous-la-menace-directe-des-nouvelles-armes-de-kim

## Introduction: The world's most exposed capital doesn't complain — it adapts

### A permanent threat that has become background scenery

Very few metropolises in the world have **30 million people** living **50 kilometres or less** from a border armed to the teeth by a regime that has never signed a peace treaty. **Seoul and the greater capital metropolitan area of South Korea** are among them. Since **June 25, 2026** — the **76th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War** — this threat has taken on a new dimension. That day, **Kim Jong Un** oversaw weapons tests that, if the figures announced by the **KCNA** agency are accurate, now place the entire Seoul metropolitan area within the direct range of a **multiple-launch rocket system** positioned near the border, without its launchers needing to relocate.

The **improved 240mm rocket system**, with a range extended to **90 kilometres** and an "**autonomous precision guidance system**," can strike virtually every major city on the South Korean peninsula from fixed positions north of the **Demilitarised Zone (DMZ)**. Analysts at **Kyungnam University** confirmed to the **Yonhap** agency that these systems are "**specifically designed to directly threaten Seoul**." In parallel, the **155mm self-propelled howitzer** tested with extended-range shells of **65 kilometres** can reach, according to experts, the southern suburbs of the metropolis.

### A deliberately chosen anniversary

The date of **June 25** is no coincidence. By choosing the anniversary of the start of the **1950–1953 Korean War** to demonstrate his new strike capabilities against the South, **Kim Jong Un** is sending a political message as much as a military one. He reminds the world that North Korea still considers itself in a state of **unresolved war** with the South — the 1950 conflict ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. And he asserts that his army is now capable of resuming where **1953 left off**, with weapons his predecessors never had.

*I live in France. I have never slept in Seoul knowing that 50 kilometres from my home, a totalitarian regime has thousands of artillery barrels pointed in my direction. This reality — which Seoulites have integrated into their daily lives for decades — fascinates and terrifies me in equal measure. There is something deeply human about the capacity to live a normal life in the face of a permanent, existential threat.*

## What the June 25, 2026 tests really mean

### Precision, range, autonomy: an unprecedented combination

What sets the **June 25** tests apart from previous ones is the combination of three elements: **extended range (90 km), autonomous precision, and rate of fire**. The **240mm multiple-launch rocket system** with **24 tubes** can fire a massive salvo in minutes. If this system can now strike Seoul with precision from its current positions, this fundamentally changes the military calculus: with minimal pre-launch warning, thousands of guided rockets could hit **key infrastructure of the South Korean capital** — airports, ports, power plants, government districts — within minutes.

The objective announced by **KCNA** is explicit: "**inflicting fatal damage on enemy airstrips, ports, and electrical installations**." This formulation clearly designates the civilian and military infrastructure of South Korea. This is not hollow rhetoric — it is a **publicly articulated targeting doctrine**, and the systems tested on June 25 are designed to execute it.

### The tactical nuclear dimension

The tests also included a **"special mission" warhead for tactical ballistic missiles**. This vague but loaded designation suggests small-format nuclear or chemical warheads designed to be fitted on short-range missiles capable of striking Seoul. If the most pessimistic interpretation is correct — and **Kim Jong Un** declared in June 2026 that the **North Korean navy will be equipped with nuclear weapons** — the threat to Seoul carries a tactical nuclear component that strategists must now integrate into all defence scenarios.

*I must be honest: I do not know whether North Korea actually possesses tactical nuclear weapons ready to be deployed on short-range missiles. That is what Kim Jong Un's government implies — but its declarations are designed to maximise strategic ambiguity. What I know is that this ambiguity is itself a weapon. It forces military planners to prepare for the worst.*

## Seoul facing the threat: a city of resilience

### Shelters, drills, normal life

The city of **Seoul** has one of the **densest networks of air-raid shelters in the world**. Tens of thousands of building basements, subway stations, and tunnels are designated as emergency shelters, regularly inspected and stocked. Every year, South Korea conducts civil protection drills where sirens sound and citizens are invited to move to the nearest shelter. In schools, emergency evacuation procedures are regularly practised.

And yet, in a city that attracts millions of tourists each year, where coffee shops and karaoke rooms run until dawn, where per capita GDP rivals that of Western European nations — the North Korean threat has been integrated into a form of **extraordinary normality**. This resilience is not naivety — it is the result of decades of psychological and infrastructural adaptation to a situation without parallel in developed democracies.

### THAAD, Patriot missiles, and the American shield

Seoul's defence rests on a **multilayer system**. The **THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense)** intercepts ballistic missiles at high altitude. **Patriot missiles** constitute a second layer at lower altitude. National South Korean air defence systems complete the setup. The **US Fifth Fleet** and American troops based in South Korea — approximately **28,500 soldiers** — constitute Washington's strategic guarantee.

*The deployment of THAAD in South Korea in 2017 almost triggered a major diplomatic crisis with China, which considers this system a threat to its own deterrence capabilities. This tension between the necessity of defending against Pyongyang and the risk of alarming Beijing perfectly illustrates the geopolitical complexity in which South Korea lives. Its leaders navigate between two unsettling powers with exceptional diplomatic care.*

## Seoul's response: 500,000 drone soldiers

### A doctrine revised in the light of the war in Ukraine

Seoul's response to the June 25 tests was swift and concrete. On **Friday, June 26**, **Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back** announced that South Korea would train **500,000 "drone soldiers"** capable of using drones as "**personal weapons**." This decision reflects a revised military doctrine: having watched how **Ukraine** uses drone swarms to neutralise Russian artillery and strike deep infrastructure, **Seoul** is drawing the operational lessons of that war for its own strategic context.

The idea of training **500,000 drone soldiers** — approximately **15% of the total reserve force** — represents a doctrinal transformation without precedent. If every soldier can operate a combat or surveillance drone as an individual weapon, battlefield coverage density increases exponentially. Against North Korean artillery that can saturate a geographic area, drones offer a mobile, discreet, and decentralised counter-battery capability.

### Drone production and international cooperation

South Korea is already a significant actor in military drone production. Its defence industry, represented by conglomerates such as **Hanwha Aerospace** and **Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI)**, is actively developing drone systems capable of matching North Korean threats. Cooperation agreements with **the United States and Europe** allow the integration of advanced technologies into domestic platforms. The war in Ukraine has also opened the door to direct knowledge-sharing with the Ukrainian industry — which has more operational experience of drone warfare than any other nation.

*South Korea is a country I deeply admire for the way it fights for its freedom while building a prosperous democracy a few dozen kilometres from a totalitarian regime. Training 500,000 drone soldiers is both a pragmatic and a symbolic response: you don't hide behind your walls — you innovate to defend yourself. That is exactly the mindset needed against regimes like Kim Jong Un's.*

## The psychological weight of permanent threat

### Life under the threat: an underexplored reality

What geostrategic analyses often overlook is the **psychological and social cost** of an entire population living under permanent threat. Academic studies conducted on Seoul populations show levels of North Korea-related threat stress significantly higher than in other comparable cities. But there is also a form of **threat fatigue** — after decades of North Korean provocations, Seoulites have developed a capacity to function normally despite background anxiety.

This habituation has its virtues — it avoids collective paralysis. But it also carries a risk: the **risk of underestimating a real escalation**. If Kim Jong Un were one day to cross the threshold of an actual strike, the normalisation of the threat could create a civilian population reaction delay that represents a real danger. This is one of the most delicate challenges of South Korea's civil defence planning.

### The memory of the 1950–1953 war

For older generations of Seoulites, the North Korean threat is not abstract. The **1950–1953 war** killed **between 2.5 and 3.5 million people** on the peninsula, a large proportion of them civilians. Entire families were separated by the demarcation line. These memories, still vivid in the over-60 generation, give the threat an existential dimension that younger generations understand intellectually but have not lived through. This **memorial fracture** also influences how South Korean society perceives the risk of conflict.

*I often think about this paradox: Seoul is one of the world's most dynamic, innovative, and culturally rich cities. And yet it lives under a sword of Damocles that most global capitals cannot even imagine. This tension between vitality and vulnerability is perhaps the best illustration of what it means to be South Korean in the 21st century.*

## The memory of the Korean War: a founding trauma still alive

### Seventy-six years on, the most "forgotten" conflict remains open

**June 25, 2026** marks the **76th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War** — a war that has never officially ended. The armistice of **July 27, 1953** is not a peace treaty. Technically, the two Koreas are still in a state of **war**, a legal and geopolitical reality that has not changed in three quarters of a century. The **Demilitarised Zone (DMZ)** — a strip of terrain **4 kilometres wide and 250 kilometres long** — remains one of the most heavily fortified and mined borders in the world.

This war, often described as the "**Forgotten War**" in the West because it fell between World War II and Vietnam in American historical memory, is omnipresent in the Korean collective consciousness. **South Korea** built its national identity partly around resilience in the face of the Northern threat. **Seoul itself**, today a megacity of **30 million inhabitants**, was largely destroyed during the war and was rebuilt in the permanent shadow of a neighbour armed with ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads. This traumatic memory structures South Korean political psychology in ways that Westerners often struggle to fully grasp.

*There is an injustice in the fact that the Korean War is described as "forgotten" in the West. For South Koreans, it has never ended. For North Koreans, it is exploited daily as a victimhood and regime-legitimation narrative. When Kim Jong Un tests missiles on June 25, he does so on the war's anniversary — this is no coincidence. The date is chosen for its symbolic weight. And we in the West barely notice the coincidence.*

## Trilateral security cooperation: Seoul, Tokyo, Washington

### A security triangle strengthened by North Korean threats

Facing North Korea's military build-up, the **United States, South Korea, and Japan** have strengthened their trilateral security cooperation in recent years. This triangle, long complicated by historical tensions between **Seoul and Tokyo** (legacy of Japanese colonisation and the "**comfort women**" issue), has become more functional under the pressure of a shared threat. The three countries now share real-time intelligence data on North Korean launches, coordinate their missile defence exercises, and consult their command chains on response protocols.

The American **THAAD** system deployed in South Korea is integrated into this trilateral architecture. **American warships** equipped with **SM-3 missiles** in the Sea of Japan constitute a third layer of North Korean missile interception. And **Japan**, which recently lifted constitutional restrictions on its defence spending and offensive capabilities, is developing its own long-range missiles capable of striking North Korean launchers on their own territory.

*The US-South Korea-Japan trilateral cooperation is one of the most solid security architectures in the Asia-Pacific. But it has one central vulnerability: it depends on the consistency of American engagement. If the Trump administration were to reduce the American military presence in Asia — to redirect resources toward the Indo-Pacific or negotiate commercial concessions — this entire architecture could become fragile. Seoul's and Tokyo's anxiety over erratic signals from Washington is understandable.*

## China's role: passive accomplice or regulatory actor?

### Beijing holds the keys but refuses to use them

**China** is theoretically in a position to exert decisive pressure on **Pyongyang**. It accounts for approximately **90% of North Korea's foreign trade** and is the main source of humanitarian and economic aid for the Kim regime. Serious Chinese sanctions could plunge the North Korean economy into a crisis that would force the regime back to the negotiating table. But **Beijing** has systematically refused to exert this pressure decisively — fearing a regime collapse that would send waves of refugees toward China, and because a reunified, pro-American Korea on its border is a scenario it dreads more than a nuclear North Korea.

This calculated ambiguity from **China** is one of the most frustrating factors in the North Korean deadlock. Beijing's official indifference to Kim Jong Un's ballistic tests — even as it presides over commercial negotiations with Washington and claims to want "regional stability" — is hypocritical and dangerous. If North Korea were to achieve credible nuclear strike capability against the continental United States, this would fundamentally alter the strategic balance in the Asia-Pacific in ways that would also affect Chinese long-term interests.

*I cannot grasp the logic of a China that would rather live with a nuclear-armed North Korea on its border than risk a pro-American Korean reunification. Both scenarios carry different risks for Beijing, but I would have thought the risk of an erratic North Korea with hundreds of nuclear warheads outweighs the risk of a stable reunified Korea. Perhaps I am wrong about China's calculations. Or perhaps China believes Pyongyang will always remain under its influence — and that confidence strikes me as dangerous.*

## Conclusion: Seoul resists, adapts — but the threat is growing

### An arms race of increasing asymmetry

The tests of **June 25, 2026** mark a qualitative threshold in the North Korean threat against Seoul. The combination of **extended range, autonomous precision, and special-mission warheads** represents a capability upgrade that demands a response. South Korea is responding with its own investments — **500,000 drone soldiers**, long-range missile systems capable of striking Pyongyang, cooperation agreements with Washington and Tokyo. But the race remains uncertain, and the **30 million inhabitants of the metropolitan area** remain its primary stakes.

### What the world must understand

The North Korean threat to Seoul is not a bilateral problem between two Koreas — it is a global security problem. If American guarantees to South Korea were weakened, if North Korea achieved intercontinental nuclear credibility, if China were to modify its calculus on peninsula stability — these changes would have global consequences. **Seoul is the canary in the coal mine** of Asia-Pacific security. What it faces today, other capitals could face tomorrow.

*I often think about what it means to live in **Seoul** — one of the world's most dynamic, innovative, and culturally rich cities — with the permanent awareness that **30 kilometres to the north**, an unpredictable regime is pointing its missiles in your direction. Seoulites have learned to live with this reality in a way I find both admirable and melancholy. They have not surrendered the joy of living under the threat. Perhaps that is the truest form of resilience.*

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

## Sources

### Primary sources

- [Yonhap — N. Korea's Kim oversees tests of key weapons seen as aimed at S. Korea — June 26, 2026](https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20260626001751315)

- [Al Jazeera — North Korea conducts major weapons tests; South training 'drone warriors' — June 26, 2026](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/6/26/north-korea-conducts-major-weapons-tests-south-training-drone-warriors)

- [SFGate/AP — North Korea's Kim watches weapons tests and calls for 'deadly and destructive' military posture — June 25, 2026](https://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/north-korea-s-kim-watches-weapons-tests-and-calls-22321476.php)

- [US News — North Korean leader Kim oversees weapons tests, KCNA reports — June 25, 2026](https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-06-25/north-korean-leader-kim-oversees-weapons-tests-kcna-reports)

### Secondary sources

- [Straits Times — North Korean leader Kim oversees weapons tests, KCNA reports — June 26, 2026](https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/north-korean-leader-kim-oversees-weapons-tests-kcna-reports)

- [The Guardian — North Korea nuclear programme expansion — June 24, 2026](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/24/north-korea-nuclear-program-kim-jong-un)

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Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/seoul-30-millions-de-citoyens-sous-la-menace-directe-des-nouvelles-armes-de-kim