(Seoul) North Korea announced Monday that it had successfully fired a new type of ballistic missile equipped with a maneuverable hypersonic warhead, a new technological advance in weapons.
The launch, the first of a solid-fueled hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), was detected by the South Korean military on Sunday afternoon.
This solid fuel was “loaded with a hypersonic and maneuverable controlled warhead,” according to North Korean state news agency KCNA.
It was intended to “verify the gliding and maneuverability capabilities” as well as “the reliability of the newly developed high-thrust, multi-stage solid fuel engine,” KCNA explained.
The agency said the launch, the first reported by Pyongyang since the start of the year, “has never affected the security of any neighboring country and has nothing to do with the regional situation.”
It comes a few days after live ammunition artillery exercises and against a backdrop of concerns around a hardening of Pyongyang’s position.
Last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un described South Korea as the country’s “main enemy” that he would not hesitate to “annihilate.”
Solid-fuel missiles are easier to hide and faster to fire, and hypersonic missiles generally allow them to be maneuvered in flight to better hit targets.
Both technologies have long been on Mr. Kim’s list of weapons technologies he wants to possess.
“Accelerating preparations”
“North Korea appears to be simultaneously pursuing the development of hypersonic missiles and intercontinental ballistic missiles using solid-fuel propellants,” said Chang Young-keun, a missile expert at the Korea National Strategy Research Institute.
“Mid- or long-range hypersonic missiles will be particularly useful in striking Guam while evading the American missile defense system,” he added, referring to the Pacific island where the United States hosts a major base. military.
In mid-December, the North Korean leader supervised the firing of a Hwasong-18, a solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), fired into the Sea of Japan.
KCNA published a single photo of the missile launch on Monday to accompany the news without mentioning Mr. Kim’s presence on the occasion.
Ankit Panda, a US-based analyst, told industry site NK News that the image suggested the missile had a “maneuverable re-entry vehicle (MaRV)”.
Pyongyang is trying to develop more precise weapons capable of “better penetrating anti-missile defenses,” he added.
Sunday’s firing comes after North Korea carried out artillery drills with live ammunition on its western coast in early January, near South Korean islands whose civilian population was called upon to take action. ‘shelter.
Relations between the two Koreas are currently at their lowest point in decades.
In late December, Mr. Kim ordered the acceleration of military preparations for a “war” that could “be unleashed at any time.” He denounced a “persistent and uncontrollable crisis situation”, according to him triggered by Seoul and Washington with their joint military exercises in the region.
“Worry beyond Seoul”
Pyongyang succeeded last year in putting a spy satellite into orbit, after having received, according to South Korea, Russian technological aid, in exchange for arms deliveries for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
Russia and North Korea, long-time allies, have shown a rapprochement since the North Korean leader’s trip to the Russian Far East in September 2023 to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin.
KCNA PHOTO, PROVIDED BY REUTERS
Meeting between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un in September 2023.
KCNA reported Sunday that North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui will visit Russia next week at the invitation of his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.
For Leif-Eric Easley, professor at South Korea’s Ewha University, this “show of force by Pyongyang should worry beyond Seoul, to the extent that its military cooperation with Moscow adds to the violence in Ukraine and because that (the North Korean regime) may be more willing to challenge the United States and its allies at a time when the world’s attention is on the Middle East” due to the war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas .
“More than just a test”
Last year, North Korea also enshrined its status as a nuclear power in its constitution and fired several intercontinental ballistic missiles, in violation of UN resolutions.
The United Nations Security Council has adopted numerous resolutions calling on North Korea to end its nuclear and ballistic missile programs since Pyongyang carried out its first nuclear test in 2006.