(Seoul) North Korea has successfully tested a “high-thrust solid-fuel engine” with the aim of developing a new weapon, the state-run KCNA news agency said Friday.
Supervised by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the test “provided scientific and technological assurance for the development of a new type of strategic weapon”, KCNA reported.
Images of this conclusive test, conducted at the Sohae satellite launch base in Tongchang-ri (northwest), showed the leader of North Korea observing the static firing of the engine, which was spitting bright yellow flames.
Despite international sanctions, Pyongyang continues to strengthen its military arsenal, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
All are for the moment with liquid propellants and Kim Jong-un had made solid fuel engines a strategic priority last year in order to evolve towards more advanced projectiles.
Liquid propellant missiles are indeed more difficult to use and require more preparation time, according to analysts.
Slower, they are also more easily spotted and destroyed by the enemy.
On the contrary, solid-fuel projectiles are “more mobile, quicker to launch and conceal, and to use in conflict,” says Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ehwa University in Seoul.
According to him, the deployment of this new technology would make the North Korean nuclear arsenal “more dangerous”.
The engine test is only one step and it remains difficult to know where the country is in the development of this type of missile, specialists report.
It is indeed “difficult to assess the thrust power achieved” during this test, the researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), Joseph Dempsey, told AFP.
This year, Kim Jong-un decreed that the nuclearization of North Korea was “irreversible” and expressed his desire to possess the most powerful nuclear arsenal in the world.
Intercontinental solid-fuel ballistic missiles, launched from land or sea, would thus be included.
Pyongyang has conducted an unprecedented series of military tests this year, including the November launch of its most technically advanced ICBM to date.
Seoul and Washington have been warning for months about the possibility of a new nuclear test by North Korea. It would be the seventh in its history.