A SQUAD of crack spies is being formed to penetrate the secretive state of North Korea in a bid to foil Kim Jong-un’s attempts to become a nuclear war lord.

The United States Forces Korea (USFK) hopes the Bond-style clandestine units will feed back intelligence on the dotty dictator’s nuke program which could unleash a nuclear holocaust on California, The Sun reports.

The 524th Military Intelligence Battalion will set the unit up in the coming weeks to lift the lid on the secretive state’s true military capabilities, according to the US Eighth Army newsletter.

A government official told South Korean broadcaster chosun.com: “The USFK operates a huge arsenal of weapons and equipment to monitor and spy on North Korea.

“But its human intelligence capability has been relatively weak, which makes it difficult to gather and analyse accurate information about the North. It looks like there was a realisation of the importance of bolstering it.”

One military source said: “Gathering intelligence through wire-tapping and satellite imagery has its limitations, so the missing pieces of the puzzle must be solved through human intelligence.”

New satellite images have today indicated that North Korea might be about to launch a new round of ballistic missile tests at its Tongchang-ri missile launch site.

Last week, US President Donald Trump warned a “major conflict” was “absolutely possible” should Kim Jong-un fire off any more test rockets.

North Korea has been covertly building military bases on artificial islands that could be used as a launching pad for nuclear missiles, new satellite images reveal.

Land is being reclaimed from the sea close to the city of Sohae where Kim Jong-un is developing his nukes and the rockets that will deliver them.

NORTH KOREA ARRESTS FOUR US CITIZENS

After arresting two American university instructors and laying out what it says was an elaborate, CIA-backed plot to assassinate Kim Jong-un, North Korea is claiming to be the victim of state-sponsored terrorism — from the White House.

The assertion comes as the US is considering putting the North back on its list of terror sponsors.

But the vitriolic outrage over the alleged plan to assassinate Kim last month is also being doled out with an unusually big dollop of retaliation threats, raising a familiar question: What on earth is going on in Pyongyang?

North Korea’s state-run media announced on Sunday that an ethnic Korean man with US citizenship was “intercepted” two days ago by authorities for unspecified hostile acts against the country.

He was identified as Kim Hak-song, an employee of the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology.

That came just days after the North announced the detention of an accounting instructor at the same university, Kim Sang-dok, also a US citizen, for “acts of hostility aimed to overturn” the country.

PUST is North Korea’s only privately funded university and has a large number of foreign teachers, including Americans.

Wife of American detained in North Korea pleads for his release https://t.co/KRFlaGX7CE pic.twitter.com/TGJK7V1QoF — CNN (@CNN) May 8, 2017

What, if anything, the arrests have to the alleged plot is unknown. But they bring to four the number of US citizens now known to be in custody in the North.

“Obviously this is concerning,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters on Monday.

“We are well-aware of it, and we are going to work through the embassy of Sweden ... through our State Department to seek the release of the individuals there.”

Sweden handles US consular affairs in North Korea, including those of American detainees.

The others are Otto Warmbier, serving a 15-year prison term with hard labour for alleged anti-state acts — he allegedly tried to steal a propaganda banner at his tourist hotel — and Kim Don-chul, serving a 10-year term with hard labour for alleged espionage.

The reported arrest of another “Mr Kim” — the North Korean man allegedly at the centre of the assassination plot — is more ominous.

—With The Sun.