North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly has adopted a new law on nuclear policy, updating a 2013 antecedent. While the law does not fundamentally upend North Korean nuclear strategy or doctrine, it expands the scenarios under which the country’s nuclear weapons may be released. It also includes the most detailed official declaratory statements about matters relating to the country’s nuclear command and control practices.

The law is evidence of North Korea’s ongoing maturation as a nuclear weapons state. It includes 11 sections and is somewhat akin in content to a document like the U.S