Kim’s early provocations for the US
North Korean leader wants the world to fear his nukes, and he may test fire new missiles to get Biden’s attention, write Jon Herskovitz and Jeong-Ho Lee
im Jong-un has rolled out a lot of new missiles in recent months, including at least one more last week. The next step is for him to fire them into the air to get President-elect Joe Biden’s attention.
The North Korean leader paraded a new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) through central Pyongyang on Thursday as part of a military pageant to mark the completion of more than a week of ruling party meetings. The Pukguksong-5, the largest in an growing line of solid-fuelled nuclear missiles, moves Mr Kim closer to opening a maritime front in his strategic struggle with the US.
The new missile comes only four months after Mr Kim unveiled a smaller version of the same rocket at a similar military parade. That event also featured a massive new intercontinental ballistic missile, which is believed to be the world’s largest road-mobile weapon of its sort.
The problem for Mr Kim is that many of these new systems haven’t been proven, diminishing their value as a deterrent against an American attack. If Mr Kim wants to achieve the ambitious nuclear programme he outlined at Workers’ Party gatherings this month, he’ll need to start launching soon.
“I am certain we will see tests in the near future,” said Melissa Hanham, a non-proliferation expert and an affiliate with the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation in California.
North Korea hasn’t fired off an ICBM since November 2017, when Mr Kim moved to open communications with President Donald Trump. Mr Kim has already declared an end to the testing freeze he put in place to facilitate talks with Mr Trump and earlier this week reaffirmed that the US was his “biggest main enemy”.
The next launches may illustrate how rapidly North Korea has developed its nuclear delivery systems over the past few years, despite tough international sanctions and Mr Trump’s three faceto-face meetings with Mr Kim. The provocations may also help pressure the Biden administration into making concessions.
North Korea tested President Barack Obama with the launch of a long-range rocket and a nuclear device within months of him taking power in 2009. He welcomed Mr Trump with a series of tests culminating with the launch of an ICBM that experts said could deliver a nuclear warhead to the entire US.
“The Biden administration need not accept this as a done deal,” said Ankit Panda, a Stanton senior fellow in the nuclear policy programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “An early signal from the US could stay Kim’s hand but Biden would have to offer a clearly valuable inducement, like the prospect of sanctions relief.”
The Biden administration has indicated it may be ready to ease sanctions in exchange for steps by Mr Kim to freeze, cap and wind down his atomic arsenal. This could help Mr Kim fix an economy that has only become even smaller since he took power about a decade ago.
Mr Kim has vowed to never surrender the nuclear arsenal he views as key to his regime’s survival. Each new missile helps bolster his argument that the US should drop its demands for “final, fully verified denuclearisation” and accept North Korea as a nucleararmed state.
Earlier this month, Mr
Kim outlined plans for smaller and lighter nuclear weapons, improving the ability to strike strategic targets within 15,000 kilometres, a thinly veiled allusion to the US. He said he was seeking to develop solid-fuel ICBMs and a nuclear-powered submarine. North Korean state media duly released photos and footage from the latest parade on Friday.
Koh Yu-hwan, president of the government-funded Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, said North Korea may hold off on testing the Pukguksong missiles for now. “Kim may just want to send a message to Washington that his weapons would only advance if the US continues to press him,” Mr Koh said, saying the goal was “opening up the possibility of talks with the new administration”.
Mr Kim’s latest SLBMs would require a vessel with more capacity than his only current missile submarine, the Gorae, said Joseph Dempsey, a London-based research associate for the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
“The considerably wider body diameter of the Pukguksong-3, -4 and now -5 raises the question if any of these missiles could be fitted on this boat, even with extensive modification,” he said. North Korea is building at least one other ballistic missile submarine, he added.
Although it could be years before Mr Kim deploys a bigger submarine, the programme will require lots of provocative tests. North Korea may conduct ejection tests of the new Pukguksong-5 on land before launching it off a submerged barge and finally from a submarine, said Ms Hanham, of the Stanford Center. Moreover, the weapons move North Korea closer to developing solidfuelled ICBMs, which can be stored full and moved quickly to evade a counterattack. The diameter of Mr Kim’s latest Pukguksong missiles appear to have reached the key 1.7-metre threshold needed to build one capable of crossing the Pacific, said Jeffrey Lewis, from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California. “North Korea could test a solid-propellant ICBM in 2021. I would expect more missile tests in the coming year,” he said.