N. Korea military parade meant to show off power
KOREA, FROM A-1
Over the past three years, a covert war over the missile program has broken out between North Korea and the United States. As the North’s skills grew, President Barack Obama ordered a surge in strikes against the missile launches, including through electronic-warfare techniques.
It is unclear how successful the program has been, because it is almost impossible to tell whether any individual launch failed because of sabotage, faulty engineering or bad luck. But the North’s launch-failure rate has been extraordinarily high since Mr. Obama first accelerated the program.
In an unusually worded statement that left hanging the question of whether the United States played a role in the launch’s failure, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said: “The president and his military team are aware of North Korea’s most recent unsuccessful missile launch. The president has no further comment.”
Vice President Mike Pence, en route to Seoul, South Korea, for the start of a 10-day trip through Asia, was briefed aboard Air Force Two on the failed missile launch. Mr. Pence was in contact with President Donald Trump about the launch, aides to the vice president said. Mr. Pence was expected to arrive in Seoul at 3:30 p.m. local time.
Hours before the unsuccessful test, three types of intercontinental ballistic missiles rolled through Pyongyang, the North’s capital, in an annual parade as the country tried to demonstrate that its military reach was expanding at a time of heightened tensions with the United States.
During the parade, Mr. Kim watched from a platform surrounded by military officers as long columns of soldiers marched, accompanied by tanks, missiles and rocket tubes.
Saturday was the 105th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, the country’s founder, Kim Jong Un’s grandfather. Kim Il Sung’s birthday, called the Day of the Sun, is the North’s most important holiday and a key moment for scoring propaganda points.
The United States, China and other regional powers had feared that North Korea might mark the occasion by conducting its sixth nuclear test or by launching an intercontinental ballistic missile. The United States sent a naval strike group to the coast of the Korean Peninsula in a show of force that has become a first, wary showdown between Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump.
But no seismic tremor emanated Saturday from the North’s nuclear test site, where recent satellite photographs have shown what appeared to be preparations for an underground detonation.
Instead, Mr. Kim seemed to have celebrated his grandfather’s birthday with a military parade meant to demonstrate his missile capabilities. He is acutely aware that the threat that he could soon possess — a missile that could strike the continental United States — is Washington’s biggest concern, and both the number and the variety of missiles he showed Saturday seemed to be sending the message that a preemptive strike against his facilities would be fruitless.
To analysts scrutinizing North Korea’s broadcast of the parade, the most noteworthy element seemed to be three types of long-range ballistic missiles, one of them apparently new.
While the North has claimed that it can strike the United States with a nuclear warhead, it has never flighttested an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of crossing the Pacific.