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Seoul: North Korea launched a “newly developed new-type tactical guided missile” on Thursday (March 25), state news agency KCNA reported on Friday, as the United States condemned the launches and warned of a threat to peace and international security.
The launches, which were the country’s first ballistic missile tests in nearly a year, underscored steady progress in its weapons program amid stalled denuclearization talks with the United States.
President Joe Biden said Thursday that the United States remained open to diplomacy with North Korea despite its missile tests this week, but warned there would be answers if North Korea made things worse.
Subsequently, the State Department condemned the ballistic missile launches as destabilizing. “These launches violate multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions and threaten the region and the international community at large,” said a State Department spokesman.
The new weapon is based on existing technology that was improved to carry a 2.5-ton warhead, KCNA reported.
KCNA said the two weapons accurately hit a target 600 kilometers off North Korea’s east coast, which conflicts with estimates by South Korean and Japanese authorities who said the missiles flew between 420 and 450 kilometers.
“The development of this weapons system is of great importance to reinforce the country’s military power and deter all kinds of military threats,” said Ri Pyong Chol, the main leader who oversaw the test, according to KCNA.
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Photos released by state media showed a black and white painted missile taking off from a military launch vehicle.
Missile specialists at the California-based James Martin Center for Non-Proliferation Studies (CNS) said it appeared to be a missile that was unveiled at a major military parade in Pyongyang last October.
If so, then Thursday’s missiles were probably an improved and probably stretched variant of the previously tested KN-23 missile with “a really big warhead,” said Jeffrey Lewis of CNS.
The KN-23 is a North Korean short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) first tested in May 2019, with visual similarity to Russia’s Iskander-M SRBM, prompting analysts to debate whether to developed with foreign aid.
The new missile’s 2.5-ton warhead may be a response to South Korea’s announcement last August that its latest Hyunmoo-4 SRBM had “the world’s largest payload” at 2 tons, Lewis said.
North Korean-developed SRBMs are designed to defeat missile defenses and perform a precision strike in South Korea, analysts say.
KCNA said Thursday’s test confirmed the missile’s ability to perform a “low-altitude glide jump-type flight mode,” a feature that makes such weapons more difficult to detect and shoot down.
The KCNA report suggested that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un did not attend the launch, and undated photos from state media released on Friday showed him inspecting new passenger buses in Pyongyang.
Kim has vowed to try to improve living conditions for citizens as North Korea’s economy was devastated by multiple crises, including international sanctions over missile and nuclear weapons programs, natural disasters, and a crushing self-imposed border blockade. which slowed trade to a trickle in an effort to prevent a COVID-19 outbreak.
