SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea launched on Thursday what it called a newly developed tactical guided missile, violating international sanctions.
It was the country’s first ballistic missile test in a year and its first provocation to the Biden government, prompting President Joe Biden to warn that there will be “responses” if North Korea continues to increase tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
A North Korean senior official, Ri Pyong Chol, responded defiantly on Saturday, warning that if the United States continues to make “thoughtless comments without thinking about the consequences, it may come across something that is not good.”
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The United States tried sanctions and dialogues to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programs.
Neither worked.
Instead, North Korea rapidly expanded its nuclear program and modernized its missile fleet under the command of Kim Jong Un, the country’s young leader. The expansion of the arsenal is a growing threat to the United States and allies in the region. Here’s what’s in it.
There are nuclear warheads and more.
North Korea’s ballistic missiles can carry nuclear warheads, and the country conducted six increasingly sophisticated underground nuclear tests between 2006 and 2017. The last four of them took place under Kim.
Its last and most powerful nuclear test was conducted in September 2017, when North Korea claimed to have detonated a thermonuclear bomb, or hydrogen. Estimates of the device’s explosive power ranged from 50 to 300 kilotons.
Only 100 kilotons would make the test six times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.
North Korea extracted plutonium, an atomic bomb fuel, from its Soviet-designed nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang. It also operates centrifuges to produce uranium enriched for weapons, another bomb fuel.
In January 2020, North Korea had 30 to 40 nuclear warheads and could produce enough fissile material for six or seven bombs a year, according to an estimate by the Arms Control Association.
Although the world is concerned about nuclear weapons in the North, the country has also stored thousands of tons of chemical and biological weapons agents that it can deliver with its missiles. When Kim’s estranged stepbrother, Kim Jong Nam, was murdered in Kuala Lumpur in 2017, North Korea used the internationally banned nerve agent VX in the operation.
Its missiles can fly over longer distances.
In 2017, North Korea made great strides in its arms capacity.
That year, the country fired its intermediate range ballistic missile, Hwasong-12, at Japan and threatened an “engaging” attack around the North American territory of Guam. It also tested Hwasong-14 and Hwasong-15, the country’s first intercontinental ballistic missiles.
At the end of the year, Kim said his country was capable of launching a nuclear attack against the continental United States.
After 2017, Kim stopped testing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, but threatened to end his moratorium when negotiations with President Donald Trump failed in 2019.
During an overnight military parade last October, North Korea displayed a new, untested ICBM that looked larger than any of the previous ones.
And at a party congress in January, Kim doubled his ideas about the accumulation of nuclear weapons, offering a long list of weapons that he said he planned to develop. They included “multiple warhead” nuclear missiles, “hypersonic” missiles, ICBMs launched on land and submarines that use solid fuel and “ultra-modern tactical nuclear weapons”.
It is not yet clear whether North Korea has mastered the technology needed to send an intercontinental nuclear warhead into space and then guide it through the Earth’s atmosphere to its target. North Korea has yet to demonstrate that its warhead can survive the intense heat and friction created by reentry.
Your weapons are getting more sophisticated.
When North Korea resumed missile testing in 2019 after the collapse of the Kim-Trump negotiations, the tests included three new weapons, dubbed KN-23, KN-24 and KN-25 by outside experts.
Each marked major advances in North Korea’s short-range ballistic missile program.
Unlike their older missiles, which used liquid fuel, all three new missiles used solid fuel. The new solid-fuel weapons, mounted on mobile launchers, are easier to transport and hide and take less time to prepare. And at least two of them, KN-23 and KN-24, could perform maneuvers at low altitude, making them more difficult to intercept.
In a military parade earlier this year, North Korea displayed what appeared to be a larger, updated version of the KN-23. Pictures released by North Korean media indicate it was the weapon tested Thursday.
The new missile was developed to be larger than the KN-23, in order to carry a larger and more fuel warhead.
Kim said in January that his country would also build a nuclear-powered submarine in order to acquire the means to deliver nuclear weapons to its opponents more stealthily.
North Korea has been testing its ballistic missiles launched by submarine Pukguksong since 2015.
During military parades in October and earlier this year, North Korea displayed what appeared to be two updated versions of its ballistic missiles launched by submarine Pukguksong. The country currently has only one submarine capable of launching a ballistic missile, but says it is building a new one with greater capabilities.
The arsenal ‘guarantees your success’.
North Korea has one of the largest permanent armies in the world, with more than 1 million soldiers. But much of its equipment is old and obsolete, and the military lacks fuel and spare parts.
North Korea has sought to make up for its shortcomings by building nuclear weapons.
Kim justifies his family’s dynastic government in North Korea by saying that the nuclear arsenal his government built was a “treasure sword” that kept North Koreans safe from foreign invasions. He tells his people that they are under constant threat from an attack by the United States.
At the party’s congress in January, Kim said his weapons program “never impedes diplomacy”, but “guarantees its success”. He also said he has no more expectations of dialogue, unless Washington makes an offer that satisfies his government.
This week’s test reflected Kim’s determination, analysts said.
He showed that “North Korea was carrying out the plans” established by Kim during the party meeting, said Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. “As previously stated, North Korea had no intention of moving first to offer a concession or make a proposal.”
This article was originally published in The New York Times.
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