From his platform, leader Kim Jong Un paid the greatest attention to this Saturday’s presentation of the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Installed in a launch vehicle that paraded at Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongygang, the moment of the presentation was the climax of an unprecedented night parade.
It is the “largest mobile liquid-burning missile to date,” Akit Panda of the Federation of American Scientists, an NGO that analyzes the risks associated with nuclear energy, wrote on Twitter.
For Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute, it is “clearly designed to test the American missile defense system in Alaska”. If the intercontinental ballistic missile has three or four warheads, he explained, the United States will have to spend about $ 1 billion to have 12 to 16 interceptor missiles for each missile.
“At this price, I am pretty sure that North Korea can add warheads faster than we can add interceptors,” he said.
The length of this missile is estimated at 24 meters and its diameter at 2.5 meters, which, according to specialist Markus Schiller, allows the transport of 100 tons of fuel. However, it is so big and heavy that it is practically unusable, he said.
“This makes absolutely no sense, except in the context of a threat equation of sending the following message: ‘Now we have a mobile ICBM with MIRV, be afraid'”.
North Korea-related experts regularly point out that the devices displayed by Pyongyang during the parades can be models and that there is no evidence that they will work until they are tested.
On Saturday, the missile was in an 11-axle vehicle, never seen before. This model is much larger than the eight-axle vehicles made in China and used so far in the North.
“This device is perhaps more frightening than the missile,” said Melissa Hanham, a researcher at the Open Nuclear Network organization.
“If North Korea is able to produce its own chassis, there will be less restrictions on the number of ICBMs it can launch.”
“Like it or not, North Korea is a nuclear power and probably the third nuclear power capable of reaching American cities, after Russia and China”
Just before he was sworn in as president of the United States in 2017, Donald Trump tweeted that North Korea “would not succeed” in developing a weapon that could reach American territory.
The first year of his term, in which he saw North Korea launch an ICBM capable of achieving that goal, was marked by a series of insult exchanges between Trump and Kim before a historic diplomatic rapprochement.
Negotiations on North Korea’s denuclearization have stalled since the failure of the Hanoi summit in 2019.
This ICBM is proof that North Korea has continued to develop its military arsenal throughout the diplomatic process, experts say, which gives Pyongyang more strength to demand a return to the negotiating table.
“Whether we like it or not, North Korea is a nuclear power and probably the third nuclear power capable of reaching American cities, after Russia and China,” Andrei Lankov of the Korea Risk Group told AFP.
Kim wanted to send a message to the United States to show that he has improved his weaponry and that “if they don’t want to make a deal now, they will have to do it later, which would be worse for the international community,” he added.
More than 12 hours after the end of the parade, North Korean television reported that neither Trump nor his Democratic rival Joe Biden had published any tweet about the subject.
According to Shin Beom-chul, of the National Security Research Institute of Korea, in showing the missile instead of launching it, Pyongyang avoided crossing the red line.
“But it also shows that North Korea could proceed with a launch if Trump is re-elected and ignores the North Korean issue,” he told AFP. However, “if Biden is elected and does not listen to North Korea, the country will launch.”
Parade marked the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Workers’ Party – and Kim Jong Un took the opportunity to celebrate the fact that “not a single person” had contracted the coronavirus in the country
The presentation of the new ballistic missile was part of the celebrations of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers’ Party. The Korean regime celebrated the event after closing its borders eight months ago to protect itself from the coronavirus, of which it has not reported any cases.
In his speech, Kim Jong Un celebrated the fact that “not a single person” has contracted the coronavirus in the country and said that he wishes “good health to all people in the world who are fighting the evils of this terrible virus”.
Public broadcaster KCTV broadcast images of squads of armed soldiers and armored vehicles, lined up on the streets of Pyongyang, ready to parade through Kim Il Sung Square in nightly images.
Neither the participants nor the audience present wore a mask, but there were far fewer citizens than usual in the square.
The broadcast began with the image of an advertising poster, featuring three North Koreans with the symbols of the sickle, hammer and brush and the slogan “The greatest victory of our great party”.
In general, North Korean parades are closed with a missile that the government wants to detach from its arsenal, and observers tend to pay special attention to this, looking for any clues about the development of weapons in the North.
“We will continue to strengthen our Army for the purposes of self-defense and deterrence,” said the North Korean leader in his speech.
The celebration of the anniversary of the Workers’ Party means that North Korea “has a political and strategic need to exhibit something big,” interpreted Sung-yoon Lee, a Korean professor at Tufts University in the United States.
The demonstration of more advanced weapons “will mark a major step forward in Pyongyang’s real threat capability,” he said.
Unlike other occasions, the foreign press was not allowed to attend the parade and, as many embassies are closed because of the coronavirus, there were almost no foreign observers in the city.
The Russian embassy in Pyongyang posted a message on its Facebook page asking diplomats and other international representatives not to “approach or take pictures” of the celebrations.
In late December, Kim threatened to reveal a “new strategic weapon”, but analysts believed, until yesterday, that Pyongyang would try not to risk his chances with Washington before the next presidential election in November.
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