North Korea signals it wants more range

With photographs obliquely showing a new rocket design, North Korea has sent a message that it was working on an intercontinental ballistic missile more powerful than any it had previously tested, weapons experts said on Thursday.

If developed, such a missile could possibly reach any place on the US mainland, including Washington and New York.

On Wednesday, North Korea’s state media published photographs of leader Kim Jong-un standing next to a diagram of a three-stage rocket it called the Hwasong-13.

Missile experts, who examine such pictures for clues about North Korea’s weapons programmes, said there was no indication the rocket had been fully developed. In any case, it had not been flight-tested and it was impossible to calculate its potential range, they said.

However, a three-stage rocket would be more powerful than the two-stage Hwasong-14 missile tested on two occasions in July, they said.

South Korean and US officials and experts have said the Hwasong-14 possibly had a range of about 10,000km and could strike many parts of the US, but not the East Coast.

“We should be looking at Hwasong-13 as a 12,000kmclass ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] that can strike all of the mainland US,” said Kim Dong-yub, a military expert at Kyungnam University’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul.

A distance in excess of 11,000km will put Washington and New York within range from anywhere in North Korea.

“It’s likely meant to show that they are working on a threestage design with greater boost and range,” said retired Brig-Gen Moon Sung-muk, an arms control expert who has represented South Korea in military talks with the North.

“They tested the Hwasong-14 — which has an estimated range of 9,000km, 10,000km.

“This one can go further, [that] is the message,” Moon said. /