N Korea unveils new missiles
NORTH KOREA/US: There was a sense of relief when April 15, the most important day in the North Korean calendar, passed without a nuclear test or a ballistic missile launch.
But that relief may be misplaced, for the military hardware paraded through Pyongyang on Saturday shows that Kim Jong Un is unrelenting in his quest to develop a missile capable of reaching the United States.
Also disquieting were reports yesterday that one day after the April 15 celebrations, the regime did attempt to launch a missile near Sinpo, on its east coast, but failed.
Experts were stunned at the sheer number of new missiles – including, apparently, a new and previously unknown type of intercontinental ballistic missile.
‘‘It’s not like not doing a nuclear test was good news – this is all part of the same programme,’’ said Jeffrey Lewis, head of the East Asia programme at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies in California. North Korea has claimed to be able to make nuclear weapons small enough to be able to fit on a missile.
‘‘It’s like they’re saying: ‘Hey, here’s some other bad news’.’’
The two-hour-long parade took place on a day officially known as the ‘‘Day of the Sun’’, the anniversary of the 1912 birth of Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s founder and the current leader’s grandfather.
A relaxed-looking Kim Jong Un stood smiling and laughing on a balcony as tens of thousands of soldiers marched past, planes in a formation making 105 – for the anniversary – flew overhead and missile transporters rolled through the square in front of him.
He did not look like a man worried about a strike ordered by President Donald Trump, like that in Syria earlier this month, or concerned about China’s increasing anger over his belligerence.
‘‘We will respond to an all-out war with an all-out war and a nuclear war of our own,’’ Choe Ryong Hae, one of Kim’s top aides, said in a speech at the parade, as the 33-year-old leader looked on.
Kim said in his New Year address that North Korea was in the ‘‘final stage’’ of preparations to test-launch an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. That prompted Trump to tweet in response: ‘‘It won’t happen!’’
But Kim appeared to demonstrate to the world that he is in the process of making it happen.
North Korea has previously shown off at these parades two kinds of ICBMS, the KN-08 and the KN-14, both with the theoretical capacity to reach the US mainland.
Saturday’s parade included the same vehicles as in the past, but instead of carrying missiles they were carrying huge, previously unseen missile canisters. Those could have contained the KN-08 and KN-14, or something else – or nothing at all. But the message was clear. ‘‘This was a promise of future capabilities more than a demonstration of existing missiles,’’ said Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, which tries to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. ‘‘We do not know if there is actually an ICBM in that canister. But it is certainly coming.’’
Furthermore, the canisters are probably an indication that North Korea is pressing ahead with solidfuel technology, because canisters are used to keep the temperature stable for solid-fuel missiles.
By using solid fuel, North Korea can roll out its missiles from a hangar or tunnel ready to launch, rather than having to fuel them on a gantry like the older liquidfuelled rockets. That allows much less time for the missiles to be detected by satellites.
North Korea has been using this technology for its submarinelaunched ballistic missile, which Kim boasted was ‘‘the greatest success’’, and the land-based variant, tested earlier this month but less successfully. Both types of missiles were displayed in the parade.
But that wasn’t all. It appeared North Korea had shown off a third and previously unknown ICBM.
The black-and-white missiles looked like KN-08S but were slightly smaller. They were rolled out on vehicles usually used for the medium-range Musudan missile, which North Korea tested a barrage of last year.
In January, South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported, citing military officials, that North Korea had probably built a new ICBM that was less than 50 feet long. The black-and-white missile seen on Saturday was consistent with that description, experts said.
But rather than being concerned that North Korea potentially had a new weapon that could reach the US, Michael Elleman, senior fellow for missile defence at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, saw something encouraging.
‘‘This could signal some confusion in terms of where they want to go with their long-range systems,’’ he said, noting that it could mean North Korea has not finalised the design of its ICBM.
– Washington Post