Seoul: North Korea on Monday celebrated the launch of what appeared to be its longest-range ballistic missile yet tested in a bid to bring the US mainland within reach, saying it was capable of carrying a “heavy nuclear warhead”.
North Korea said it would continue such launches “any time, any place”, defying UN Security Council resolutions and warnings from the United States.
Leader Kim Jong-un personally oversaw the test on Sunday, the official Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) said, and pictures by state media showed him gazing at the missile in a hangar before the launch. In others, he gleefully clasped hands with officers and staff after the black missile, named Hwasong-12, ascended into the sky in the dawn light, atop a column of fire.
The missile was launched on an unusually high trajectory, with KCNA saying it flew to an altitude of 2,111.5 kilometres and travelled 787 kilometres before coming down in the Sea of Japan (East Sea). That suggests a range of 4,500 kms or more if flown for maximum distance, analysts said.
Aside from Pyongyang's space launches, Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in the US said, “This is the longest-range missile North Korea has ever tested.”
On the respected 38 North website, aerospace engineering specialist John Schilling said it appeared to demonstrate an intermediate-range ballistic missile that could “reliably strike the US base at Guam” in the Pacific. “More importantly,” he added, it “may represent a substantial advance to developing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)”.
The North has carried out two atomic tests and dozens of missile launches since the beginning of last year in its quest to develop a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to the continental United States — something President Donald Trump has vowed “won’t happen”.
That would require a flight of 8,000 km or more and technology to ensure a warhead’s stable re-entry into the atmosphere.
KCNA said the new rocket was a “perfect weapon” which was “capable of carrying a large-size heavy nuclear warhead”. It said the test launch verified the homing feature of the warhead that allowed it to survive “under the worst re-entry situation” and accurately detonate.
It cited Mr Kim as saying the North would never succumb to what it called the “highly ridiculous” US strategy of “militarily brow beating only weak countries and nations which have no nukes”. “If the US dares opt for a military provocation against the DPRK, we are ready to counter it,” it said.
