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From his platform, leader Kim Jong Un paid the greatest attention to this Saturday’s presentation of the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Installed in a launch vehicle parading in Pyongygang’s Kim Il Sung Square, the moment of the presentation was the culmination of an unprecedented night parade.
It is the “largest liquid-burning mobile missile to date,” Akit Panda of the Federation of American Scientists, an NGO that analyzes the risks associated with nuclear power, wrote on Twitter.
For Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute, it is “clearly designed to test the US missile defense system in Alaska.” If the ICBM has three or four warheads, he explained, the United States will have to spend about a billion dollars to have 12 to 16 interceptor missiles for each missile.
“At this price, I am almost certain North Korea can add warheads faster than we can add interceptors,” he said.
The length of this missile is estimated at 24 meters and its diameter at 2.5 meters, which, according to specialist Markus Schiller, allows the transport of 100 tons of fuel. However, it is so big and heavy that it is practically unusable, he said.
“This makes absolutely no sense, except in the context of a threat equation of sending the following message: ‘We now have a mobile ICBM with MIRV, be afraid.’
North Korean-related experts regularly point out that the devices displayed by Pyongyang during the parades may be models and that there is no evidence that they will work until they are tested.
On Saturday, the missile was in an 11-axle vehicle, never seen before. This model is much larger than the eight-axle vehicles made in China and used so far in the north.
“This device is perhaps more terrifying than the missile,” said Melissa Hanham, a researcher at the Open Nuclear Network.
“If North Korea can produce its own chassis, there will be fewer restrictions on the number of ICBMs it can launch.”
“Like it or not, North Korea is a nuclear power and probably the third nuclear power capable of reaching American cities, after Russia and China.”
Just before he was sworn in as US president in 2017, Donald Trump tweeted that North Korea “would not be successful” in developing a weapon that could reach US soil.
The first year of his tenure, in which he saw North Korea launch an ICBM capable of achieving that goal, was marked by a series of exchanges of insults between Trump and Kim before a historic diplomatic rapprochement.
Negotiations on the denuclearization of North Korea have stalled since the failure of the Hanoi summit in 2019.
This ICBM is proof that North Korea has continued to develop its military arsenal throughout the diplomatic process, experts say, giving Pyongyang more strength to demand a return to the negotiating table.
“Like it or not, North Korea is a nuclear power and probably the third nuclear power capable of reaching American cities, after Russia and China,” Andrei Lankov of the Korea Risk Group told AFP.
Kim wanted to send a message to the United States to show that it has improved its weapons and that “if they don’t want to make a deal now, they will have to do it later, which would be worse for the international community,” he added.
More than 12 hours after the end of the parade, North Korean television reported that neither Trump nor his Democratic rival Joe Biden had published cheep on the matter.
According to Shin Beom-chul of the Korea National Security Research Institute, by displaying the missile instead of launching it, Pyongyang avoided crossing the red line.
“But it also shows that North Korea could proceed with a launch if Trump is re-elected and ignores the North Korean issue,” he told AFP. However, “if Biden is elected and does not listen to North Korea, the country will launch.”
The parade marked the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party, and Kim Jong Un took the opportunity to celebrate the fact that “not a single person” had contracted the coronavirus in the country.
The presentation of the new ballistic missile was part of the celebrations of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers’ Party. The Korean regime held the event after closing its borders eight months ago to protect itself from the coronavirus, of which it has not reported any cases.
In his speech, Kim Jong Un celebrated the fact that “not a single person” has contracted the coronavirus in the country and said he wishes “good health to all the people of the world who are fighting against the evils of this terrible virus.”
Public broadcaster KCTV broadcast images of squads of armed soldiers and armored vehicles, lining the streets of Pyongyang, ready to parade through Kim Il Sung Square in night footage.
Neither the participants nor the public present wore a mask, but there were far fewer citizens than usual in the square.
The broadcast began with the image of a billboard, featuring three North Koreans with the symbols of the sickle, hammer and paintbrush and the slogan “The greatest victory of our great party.”
In general, North Korean parades are closed with a missile that the government wants to unload from its arsenal, and observers tend to pay special attention to this, looking for any clues about the development of weapons in the North.
“We will continue to strengthen our Army for self-defense and deterrence purposes,” the North Korean leader said in his speech.
The celebration of the anniversary of the Workers’ Party means that North Korea “has a political and strategic need to show something great,” interpreted Sung-yoon Lee, a Korean professor at Tufts University in the United States.
The demonstration of more advanced weapons “will mark a great step forward in Pyongyang’s real threat capability,” he said.
Unlike on other occasions, the foreign press was not allowed to attend the parade, and as many embassies are closed due to the coronavirus, there were almost no foreign observers in the city.
The Russian embassy in Pyongyang posted a message on its Facebook page asking diplomats and other international representatives not to “come near or take pictures” of the celebrations.
At the end of December, Kim threatened to reveal a “new strategic weapon”, but analysts believed, until yesterday, that Pyongyang would try not to risk its chances with Washington before the next presidential election in November.
