N. Korea’s new missile appears to be bigger

SEOUL, South Korea — The intercontinental ballistic missile North Korea launched this week was a new type of missile bigger and more powerful than any the country had tested before, South Korean officials said Thursday.

Photos from the North’s official Korean Central News Agency are providing valuable clues about the capabilities of the missile, named the Hwasong15. North Korea said it carried a “super-large heavy warhead which is capable of striking the whole mainland of the U.S.”

North Korea’s Hwasong series represents the most successful and formidable part of its ballistic missile arsenal, and photographs of the test suggested improvements over the Hwasong-14, a missile first tested over the summer that showed the country’s capacity to strike the continental United States.

“We believe this is a new type of missile,” said Roh Jae-cheon, a spokesman for the South Korean military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. “It looks clearly different from the Hwasong-14 in the external looks of its nose cone, the linkage between its first and second stages, and its overall size.”

South Korean officials said the launch suggested that North Korea’s missile program was advancing faster than previously believed.

Private analysts agreed that the Hwasong-15 looked bigger and more powerful than the Hwasong-14.

Kim Dong-yub, a defense analyst at the Seoulbased Institute for Far Eastern Studies, said North Korea appeared to have built the Hwasong-15 by upgrading the second stage of the Hwasong-14, which carries the missile through space after the first-stage booster drops off.

Mr. Kim also reported an important discovery: He said the Hwasong-15 appeared to have two engines for its first booster stage, giving the new missile greater range than previous models.

Mr. Kim said, “This is indeed a new type of missile.”

He said that if the missile’s first stage was in fact powered by two engines instead of one, it would dispel earlier speculation among some analysts that North Korea might have loaded a very light mock warhead on the Hwasong-15 so it could fly farther.

Chang Young-keun, a missile expert at Korea Aerospace University near Seoul, said two Hwasong14 booster engines were bundled together to propel the Hwasong-15, giving it the true range of an ICBM. North Korean engineers may also have helped the Hwasong-15 fly farther by fitting its thicker second stage with more fuel or more thrusters.