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N Korea says it successfully tests long-range rocket engine North Korea unveils home-made engine for missile capable of striking U.S.
(35 minutes later)
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Saturday it has successfully tested a new intercontinental ballistic rocket engine that will give it the ability to stage nuclear strikes on the United States. TOKYO – North Korea has unveiled what it said was a domestically designed engine for an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States, the latest in a steady drumbeat of threats coming from Kim Jong Un’s regime.
The engine’s ground test, if true, would be a big step forward for the North’s nuclear weapons program, which saw its fourth atomic test earlier this year. But the North may still need a good deal of work before it can hit the U.S. mainland with nuclear missiles. South Korean officials say North Korea doesn’t yet have a reliable intercontinental ballistic missile, let alone the ability to arm it with a nuclear warhead. Saturday’s announcement, through the official Korean Central News Agency, could not be immediately verified. But analysts said Pyongyang’s constant boasts of military advances sent a clear message to the United States.
The test, announced by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, is only the latest in a string of what Washington and its allies consider North Korean provocations, including last month’s launch of a medium-range ballistic missile that violated U.N. Security Council resolutions that prohibit any ballistic activities by North Korea. It was the North’s first medium-range missile launch since early 2014. “With all the missiles they’re building, the ranges are getting longer and they’re going to be able to throw more stuff further,” said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif.
The North has also threatened pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Washington and Seoul and fired short-range missiles and artillery into the sea in an apparent response to ongoing U.S.-South Korean military drills and tough U.N. sanctions imposed over the recent nuclear test and a long-range rocket launch earlier this year. “It seems pretty clear that they’re sick of us making fun of them, and they’re going to shove it down our throats,” Lewis said.
Some analysts think young leader Kim Jong Un’s belligerent stance is linked to a major ruling party congress next month meant to further cement his grip on power. The outside pressure and anger caused by bombastic threats and repeated nuclear-related tests, the argument goes, is meant to rally the North Korean people around Kim as he stands up to powerful enemies trying to crush the North. North Korea recently unveiled a KN-08 road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile, also known as a Rodong-C, but with engines that did not look like those that had powered other recently launches. This left nuclear scientists scratching their heads.
With typical rhetorical flourish, the North’s KCNA said that Kim was delighted as the “higher-power” rocket engine spewed out “huge flames with (a) deafening boom” during the ground test at the Sohae Space Center in the country’s northwest, the site of its February long-range rocket launch. KCNA did not say when the test was conducted. [North Korean restaurant workers defect en masse to South Korea]
The agency quoted Kim as saying that the North can now tip intercontinental ballistic missiles with more powerful nuclear warheads that could keep the U.S. mainland within striking distance and “reduce them to ashes so that they may not survive in our planet.” Saturday, KCNA said that North Korea had successfully tested a new “indigenously designed” engine, under Kim’s supervision, at the Sohae missile launch site near the country’s west coast.
The North recently has gone to great lengths to tout alleged advancements in its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Those claims have often been met with doubt by South Korean officials and experts. The North’s official media on March 9 showed a smiling Kim posing with nuclear scientists beside what appeared to be a model trigger device of a nuclear warhead. Kim declared that warheads had been miniaturized for use on ballistic missiles. “Dear Comrade Kim Jong Un said now we can mount an ever more powerful nuclear warhead on a new intercontinental ballistic rocket and put the den of evil in the United States and all over the world within our strike range,” the news agency said.
The North has also claimed to have mastered a re-entry technology designed to protect a warhead from extreme heat and other challenges when it returns to the atmosphere from space following a missile launch. It also said it had successfully conducted a high-powered, solid-fuel rocket engine test. Solid-fuel missiles are generally harder to detect before they are launched than liquid-fuel missiles. Previous estimates of North Korea’s firepower had it just able to reach the continental United States, but if it had successfully manufactured an 80-ton-booster – as the Treasury department recently claimed in sanctions against North Korea – it would put the American mainland within relatively easy reach, analysts said.
The most recent test, like all the North’s atomic and missile claims, will cause worry in Washington and the North’s neighbors, but outsiders have so far been powerless to stop the North’s nuclear progress: international disarmament talks have been stalled for years and increasingly tough sanctions have done little to dissuade Pyongyang from pushing forward. Since North Korea conducted its fifth nuclear test in January, Kim’s regime has crowed about a whole range of technical leaps and bounds, from road-mobile multiple rocket launchers and solid fuel rocket engines to being able to make a nuclear warhead small enough to attach to a missile.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. These advances have been accompanied by a series of threats to blow up New York City, the White House and South Korea’s presidential Blue House.
While North Korea has fired a range of projectiles, it has not demonstrated an ability to successfully fire a nuclear-tipped missile and hit a target. That would almost certainly be suicide, given the retaliation from the United States and South Korea it would provoke.
[North Korea works around the clock to prepare for Kim Jong Un’s ‘70-day campaign’]
But an increasing number of military top brass and scientists say that if North Korea doesn’t have this capability yet, it’s just a matter of time until it does.
South Korean government officials this week said they thought North Korea had now mastered this technology, while Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, and Adm. William Gortney, head of the U.S. Northern Command, have both said the same.
“I assess that they have the ability to put an ICBM in space and reach the continental United States and Canada,” Gortney said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing last month.
North Korea’s boasts come at a sensitive time on the peninsula. The United States and South Korea are conducting joint military drills, which Pyongyang views as a pretext for an invasion, through the end of this month, while North Korea is preparing for its first Workers’ Party Congress in 36 years.
The regime has been laying the groundwork for the meeting next month, where Kim is expected to try to bolster his legitimacy as the young, third-generation leader of North Korea. Being able to crow about a strong nuclear deterrent would be a good way to do that, analysts say.
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