North Korea ‘goading foes’ with surge in missile tests
Kim Jong-un ‘testing the waters with Washington, Beijing and Seoul’ amid worsening crises at home
NORTH Korea started the year with an unprecedented flurry of January missile launches, squeezing four weapons tests into a 12-day period in what appears to be an effort to fulfil leader Kim Jong-un’s pledge to modernise the country’s war deterrents regardless of international sanctions.
Kim even appeared at one of the tests this month for the first time in nearly two years, donning a familiar pair of binoculars to oversee a reported hypersonic missile being launched.
Hypersonic missiles, whose increased manoeuvrability makes it difficult to intercept, are listed among the “top priority” tasks for the country’s strategic weapons development.
This week, the regime threatened to go even further, with a threat to lift its four-year moratorium on testing nuclear warheads and long-range ballistic missiles, raising fears of a fresh crisis on the Korean Peninsula.
The ruling politburo has warned of “long-term confrontation” with “US imperialists”, reviving concerns of a return to the brinkmanship of 2017 when Donald Trump, then US president threatened “fire and fury” against “little rocket man” and Pyongyang mocked him as a “mentally deranged dotard”.
The question perplexing analysts is, why so many tests now? One explanation is that Pyongyang is merely following up on Kim’s directive to produce powerful, modern weapons to improve the country’s military capabilities.
“The increasingly unstable military environment on the Korean Peninsula and international politics have instigated calls to vigorously push forward with our national defence build-up plans without any delay,” Kim said at the launch of his five-year plan at a key Party Congress in 2021.
“There have been a mix of both developmental tests and operational exercises this month,” said Ankit Panda, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The broader picture is that Kim continues to modernize his capabilities per the agenda he outlined.”
The spike in launches could simply be about Pyongyang’s military “keeping their swords sharp” in step with other countries in the region, agreed John Delury, a professor of Chinese Studies at Seoul’s Yonsei University.
But it could also be a way of provoking a reaction amid a three-year impasse in nuclear talks and fresh sanctions imposed by Washington earlier this month. “Kim Jong-un is testing the waters with Washington, Beijing and Seoul, and seeing what sort of responses each step elicits,” said Mr Delury.
Crucially, it still leaves “wiggle room” to come back to the table after negotiations collapsed at a summit in Hanoi between Kim and Mr Trump in February 2019. “If I was advising the Biden administration, I would say bite and see where it goes because we know that sanctions and censure don’t get the North Koreans to do what you want them to do,” Mr Delury added.
Another significant factor is North Korea’s deteriorating domestic situation, say experts.
This time of year normally sees the military conduct its “winter training cycle”, but with soldiers going hungry and the country’s pandemic status unknown, the missile launches could be a distraction tactic.