The DPRK spent $1,221 a minute on its nuclear program in 2021, a total of $642 million, analysts with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) calculated.

ICAN's "2021 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending" report estimates spending on weapons by countries with the largest military budgets, including the United States, China and Russia, and summarizes data on concluded arms contracts and lobbying.

ICAN estimates that North Korea has 20 completed nuclear warheads. Pyongyang is developing missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons that can be launched from the ground and from submarines. In 2020, South Korea estimated North Korea's gross national income (GNI) at 35 trillion North Korean won. It is not possible to pinpoint North Korea's military spending, but South Korean analysts estimated in 2009 that Pyongyang spent about a third of GNI, that is, $8.7 billion, on its armed forces.

As the ICAN analysts reasoned, assuming North Korea continues to spend 35 percent of its GNI on its armed forces, North Korea would have spent about 12.2 trillion Korean won on its armed forces in 2020.