North Korea flaunts ballistic missile with range to strike anywhere in continental U.S.
A TV screen shows an image of North Korea’s an intercontinental ballistic missile launch during a news program at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea on Thursday morning test-fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile with the range to hit the continental United States, just five days before the U.S. presidential election.
Though Pyongyang has already tested an ICBM capable of striking the American homeland, analysts said Thursday’s missile displayed significantly improved performances over prior models.
Experts say the timing of the launch may have been driven by political considerations in the United States rather than pressing technical reasons – and not simply the Nov. 5 election.
On Wednesday, the U.S. and South Korean defense ministers lambasted North Korea during a meeting at the Pentagon over reports the regime of Kim Jong-un has dispatched thousands of troops to Russia to aid in the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine.
“I affirm that [North Korea] will never change its line of bolstering up its nuclear forces,” Mr. Kim said Thursday, according to North Korea’s state-controlled press.
Deploying language that is typical for North Korean provocations, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol ordered his National Security Council to prepare a “stern” response.
In Washington, National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said the launch “needlessly raises tensions and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region.”
Japanese and South Korean news outlets reported that the North Korean missile flew for some 86 minutes and reached an altitude of more than 4,300 miles – record flight times and heights for a North Korean missile. It flew approximately 621 miles before splashing in the Sea of Japan.
The test was conducted at a lofted trajectory. If fired at a normal angle, analysts estimate, the missile would have the range to reach the entire continental U.S.
The missile, according to the South Korean Joint Chiefs, was likely a solid-fuel weapon. That means it can be rolled out of cover and launched more swiftly than a liquid-fueled weapon, avoiding preemptive strikes.
North Korea tested a solid-fuel ICBM last December.
The Thursday test has heightened fears that an even more provocative move may soon be heard from north of the DMZ.
South Korean lawmakers, after defense briefings, said this week that there are signs North Korea has put preparations in place for a nuclear weapons test at its mountainous test site at Punggye-ri, possibly in November.
Though many pundits have long anticipated the test of a powerful tactical device, multiple predictions that the Km regime was ready to stage an even more provocative nuclear test since 2022 have proven incorrect.
Pyongyang has successfully tested strategic-yield nuclear devices on six occasions. The last test, in 2017, brought a fiery condemnation from then-President Donald Trump.
North Korea’s missile development program dates back to the late 1970s. It tested its first ballistic missile in 1998 and its first ICBM with the range to reach the United States in 2017.
Questions continue to hang over Pyongyang’s reentry vehicles and the accuracy of its guidance systems, however.
North Korea has a long history of defying U.N. Security Council resolutions which forbid it from possessing ballistic missile technologies and nuclear arms. North Korea’s warming relationship with Russia, including a strategic partnership signed in June, has kept the Council divided over whether and how to confront Pyongyang.
Experts say that North Korea considers two factors in deciding when to hold weapons tests.
Internally, it operates a calendar to test upgrades to its extensive range of domestically built military technologies. Externally, it often times the tests to signal its capabilities and its global relevance to overseas audiences.
“This was as good a time as any, I suppose,” said Daniel Pinkston, a Seoul-based academic who teaches international relations at Troy University. “Probably both the [Washington] meeting and the election are good timings to signal strength and resolve.”
Pyongyang’s current rhetoric against Seoul is particularly shrill, but Mr. Pinkston said that the apparent deployment of troops to Russia indicates that North Korea is unlikely to be considering any serious moves against its southern neighbor.
“As far as North Korea lashing out, they are doing it on the other side of the continent,” he said.
Multiple intelligence assessments from Kyiv, Seoul and Washington suggest that some 10,000 to 13,000 regime troops are massing in Russia, likely prior to joining the Ukraine conflict.
“If they were interested in initiating a conflict, I don’t think they would be sending those guys off,” he added.
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