North Korea has successfully tested a “high-thrust solid-fuel motor” with the aim of developing a new weapon, state media said yesterday.
Despite heavy international sanctions over its weapons programs, Pyongyang has built up an arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
All its known ICBMs are liquid-fueled, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said last year that developing solid-fuel engines for more advanced missiles was a strategic priority.
Photo: AFP
On Thursday, he oversaw the successful test fire of a “high-thrust solid-fuel motor,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported.
KCNA described it as an important test “for the development of another new-type strategic weapon system.”
Images released by state media showed Kim observing the test at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station, as the horizontally placed motor spewed a bright yellow flame.
Another image showed him grinning with a lit cigarette in his hand and a tower of white smoke from the test behind him.
Liquid-fuel rockets are notoriously difficult to operate and take a long time to prepare for launch, so they are slower, and easier for an enemy to spot and destroy, analysts have said.
Solid-fuel missiles are “more mobile, quicker to launch, and easier to conceal and use during a conflict,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.
“Once deployed, the technology would make North Korea’s nuclear forces more versatile, survivable and dangerous,” Easley said.
Kim said this year that he wants North Korea to have the world’s most powerful nuclear force, and declared his country an “irreversible” nuclear state.
The wish list he revealed last year included solid-fuel ICBMs that could be launched from land or submarines.
The latest motor test was a step toward that goal, but it is not clear how far North Korea has come in the development of such a missile, analysts said.
It is “difficult to assess the thrust output claimed by North Korea,” International Institute for Strategic Studies researcher Joseph Dempsey said.
“What other technical challenges remain and how far away a flight test of such a system is remains unknown,” he added.
Pyongyang has conducted an unprecedented wave of weapons tests this year, including the firing of its most advanced ICBM.
It is usually a serene two-and-a-half-hour ride on Japan’s famously efficient bullet train, but on Saturday, the journey quickly descended into a zombie apocalypse, with passengers screaming in terror. Organizers of the adrenaline-filled trip, less than two weeks before Halloween, touted it as the world’s first haunted house experience on a running Shinkansen. On board one chartered car of the Shinkansen, about 40 thrill-seekers were ready to brave an encounter with the living dead between Tokyo and the western metropolis of Osaka. The eerie experience was inspired by the hit 2016 South Korean action-horror movie Train to Busan, in which a father and
The space rock that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period caused a global calamity that doomed the dinosaurs and many other life forms, but that was far from the largest meteorite to strike our planet. One up to 200 times bigger landed 3.26 billion years ago, triggering worldwide destruction at an even greater scale, but as new research shows, that disaster actually might have been beneficial for the early evolution of life by serving as “a giant fertilizer bomb” for the bacteria and other single-celled organisms called archaea that held dominion at the
NEW RECRUITS: A video released by Ukrainian officials allegedly shows dozens of North Koreans lining up to collect military fatigues from Russian servicemen Russian aerial strikes wounded more than a dozen and knocked out electricity for tens of thousands of Ukrainians overnight in attacks on residential areas as temperatures dropped toward freezing, Kyiv said yesterday. Ukraine also said it had targeted a crucial Russian explosives factory, about 750km from the border, in an overnight drone attack, while Moscow said it had shot down 110 drones, the largest attempted aerial barrage by Kyiv in more than two weeks. At least 17 people were wounded in an attack on Kryvyi Rig, Ukraine, including a first responder, the Ukrainian State Emergency Service said. “At night, the enemy attacked Kryvyi
PROPAGANDA: The leaflets attacked the South Korean president and first lady with phrases such as: ‘It’s fortunate that President Yoon and his wife have no children’ North Korean propaganda leaflets apparently carried by balloons were found scattered on the streets of the South Korean capital, Seoul, yesterday, including some making personal attacks on the country’s president and first lady. The leaflets attacking South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and first lady Kim Keon-hee found in the capital appear to be the first instance of the North Korean government directly sending anti-South propaganda material across the border. They included graphic messages accusing the Yoon government of failures that had left his people living in despair, and describing the first couple as immoral and mentally unstable. The leaflets included photographs of the