OAN Staff Jenna Lee
10:21 AM – Tuesday, May 12, 2026
According to recent updates to North Korea’s constitution, the state is now legally mandated to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike in the event that leader Kim Jong Un is assassinated by a foreign power.
This aggressive pivot reportedly serves as a direct response to the events of February 28th, when a joint military operation by U.S. and Israeli forces resulted in the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his inner circle during a targeted strike on his Tehran compound.
By codifying this “dead hand” policy, Pyongyang aims to establish an irreversible deterrent against decapitation strikes, signaling that the removal of its leadership would trigger an automatic and catastrophic escalation.
“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,” read the revised Article 3 of North Korea’s nuclear-policy law.
The constitutional revision was likely ratified during a session of North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly that convened in Pyongyang on March 22nd, with the details subsequently briefed to senior South Korean government officials.
According to reporting by the New York Times, this information was only disclosed to the public last week. While Kim Jong Un already maintains absolute authority over the nation’s nuclear arsenal, this specific constitutional amendment codifies a formal protocol for the nuclear forces to follow in the event of his assassination.
By explicitly outlining these retaliatory measures, the update transforms a matter of personal command into a rigid state directive, ensuring a definitive response even in the absence of the supreme leader.
“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. North Korea saw the remarkable efficiency of the U.S.-Israeli decapitation attacks, which immediately eliminated the greater part of the Iranian leadership, and they must now be terrified,” said Andrei Lankov, an international relations professor at Kookmin University in Seoul, South Korea.
In addition to the new nuclear protocols, the constitutional revision includes amendments that formally define North Korea’s sovereign territory and excise long-standing references to “peaceful reunification.”
Notably, the update to Article 2 marks the first time the country has incorporated a specific territorial clause into its constitution, explicitly stating that North Korea’s boundaries encompass the land bordering the People’s Republic of Korea and the Russian Federation to the north and the Republic of Korea to the south.
According to analysts, this geographical clarification serves to legally solidify the permanent division of the peninsula and represents Pyongyang’s rejection of a shared national identity with Seoul.
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