North Korea passes new law authorizing its military to 'automatically' launch nuclear strikes if the country's leadership is threatened

• North Korea has passed a new law enshrining the right to use nuclear first strikes.
• It states that leader Kim Jong Un will have all the decision-making power concerning such attacks.

North Korea passed a law on Thursday authorizing its military to execute nuclear first strikes "automatically and immediately" if its leadership comes under attack, according to state media.

The new law gives the leader Kim Jong Un all the decision-making power concerning the use of nuclear weapons and is "irreversible," he said, according to state outlet KCNA.

The nation's leadership maintained that the "main mission" of its nuclear weapons is to deter a hostile attack and that a nuclear strike would be used only as a last resort, per the outlet.

However, the law also details situations in which North Korea can legally fire a nuclear weapon.

It states that a nuclear weapon can be used if an impending "fatal military attack" against a North Korean strategic target is detected, even if the initiating strike is non-nuclear, per KCNA.

Furthermore, a nuclear weapon can also be launched "automatically and immediately" if the command system for the country's nuclear forces is "placed in danger."

The law also dictates that a nuclear first strike may even be used in other scenarios, such as to gain the upper hand in a war, KCNA reported.

In contrast, North Korea's neighbor and ally, China, adheres to a "no first-use" policy, meaning that it would consider a nuclear strike only if a similar attack was first made against it.

The law was passed by the Supreme People's Assembly, North Korea's rubber-stamp parliamentary body, as the nearly 700-member panel met for its seventh session. The assembly is overwhelmingly controlled by the ruling Workers' Party.

The law comes as North Korea resumed testing long-range ballistic weapons in March after a five-year break, angering its neighbors and the West. Included in its arsenal are missiles that can reach the US east coast.

One of the most immediate effects of the law is that countries negotiating nuclear disarmament with North Korea would now likely have to pay much higher prices to move the needle, said Sean King, an affiliated scholar at the University of Notre Dame's Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies.

"What this new edict tells me is that the cost for any-sized North Korean arms reduction at all just went up," he told Insider.

North Korea recently rejected a deal for disarmament. South Korea had earlier this month offered to help the North with food, health care, agriculture, and infrastructure if it would work toward denuclearization.

In response, Kim Yo Jong, the sister of Kim Jong Un, described the plan as "foolish" and "absurd."

"No one barters its destiny for corn cake," she wrote.