SEOUL – North Korea has been testing a missile barrage in recent weeks, a drill that culminated on Tuesday with the launch of an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan in the Pacific Ocean.

The test missile, which has arrived farther than any other rocket launched by the country before, it was the latest demonstration of the Northern military arsenal, that is growing it is and increasingly sophisticated.

The escalation occurs at a time when its leader, Kim Jong Un, it sought to consolidate the country’s position as a nuclear power and its role as ruler at the top.

Last month, North Korea adopted a new law that says it will launch a nuclear strike “Automatically and immediately“If you put the command and control system of his nuclear forces – an apparent reference to Kim’s leadership – endangered.

As the risk of a nuclear war increases once again with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Kim earlier this year pledged to expand North Korea’s nuclear arsenal “as quickly as possible”.

He indicated that it was not a simple element deterrent, but it could be used “if any force attempts to violate the fundamental interests of our state”.

North Korea did 23 weapon tests so far this year, with a total of 43 ballistic and cruise missiles.

Last week it carried out four tests, in apparent protest against the joint military exercises of the United States, South Korea and Japan.

President Joe Biden He warned that there will be “answers” if North Korea continues to escalate tensions on the Korean peninsula, but his calls to the United Nations to impose more sanctions earlier this year were blocked by Russia and China.

The international community and the United States have repeatedly attempted both dialogue and sanctions to persuade North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programs.

Neither worked.

Kim, the North Korean leader, said last month that “there will be no more negotiations on our nuclear energy ”.

While it is difficult to get a clear and up-to-date picture of North Korea’s military capabilities, analysts and observers agree that in the decade Kim ruled, North Korea has quickly expanded its nuclear program and modernized its missile fleet.

The expansion of the arsenal is a growing threat to the United States and its allies in the region.

This is what it contains.

An increasing number of nuclear warheads

North Korea’s ballistic missiles can carry nuclear warheads, and the country conducted six increasingly sophisticated underground nuclear tests between 2006 and 2017.

The last four were executed on Kim’s mandate.

This year, Washington and Seoul have repeatedly warned that North Korea is preparing for another nuclear test in Punggye-ri, where the North has conducted all of its previous underground nuclear tests.

Its latest and most powerful nuclear test took place in September 2017, when North Korea claimed it detonated a bomb. thermonuclear, or hydrogen.

Estimates of the device’s explosive power ranged from 50 and 300 kilotons.

With only 100 kilotons the proof would be six times more powerful on which the bomb fell Hiroshima in 1945.

North Korea mined plutoniuman atomic bomb fuel, from its Soviet-designed nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang.

It also uses centrifuges to produce enriched uranium for weapons, more fuel for bombs.

By 2021, North Korea had enough fissile material for 40 or 50 warheads nuclear weapons and could produce enough for six or seven bombs a year, according to an estimate by the Arms Control Association.

Last year, the UN nuclear control body said North Korea could prepare to increase production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium in Yongbyon.

Missiles capable of flying farther North Korea demonstrated major advances in its weapons capability in 2017.

That year, the country launched its intermediate-range ballistic missile, Hwasong-12, against Japan and threatened a “enveloping” attack. around the US territory of Guam.

It also conducted test launches of Hwasong-14 and Hwasong-15, the country’s first ICBMs.

At the end of the year, Kim claimed that his country had the ability to launch a nuclear strike against the continental United States.

After 2017, Kim stopped testing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, but threatened to end her moratorium when talks with President Donald Trump broke down in 2019.

During a night military parade in the fall of 2020, North Korea showed something newor intercontinental ballistic missile untested looked larger than any of the above.

In March, North Korea appeared to be conducting its most powerful ICBM test to date.

Although state media dubbed it the largest Hwasong-17 and showed the missile in a Hollywood-style propaganda video,

South Korea he later said it appeared to be the Hwasong-15, an older model.

South Korea said the launch videos and photos were manipulated to exaggerate the results of Kim’s guns to the domestic audience.

The biggest unanswered question is whether North Korea has mastered the technology needed to deliver an intercontinental nuclear warhead. to space and then guide it back through the earth’s atmosphere to its target.

North Korea has yet to prove that its warhead can survive the intense heat and friction created by return.

Their weapons are becoming more and more sophisticated

When North Korea resumed missile tests in 2019 following the failure of talks between Kim and Trump, the tests included three new weapons, codenamed KN-23, KN-24 and KN-25 by external experts.

Each of them marked major advances in North Korea’s short-range ballistic missile program.

Unlike its old missiles which used liquid fuel, all three of the new missiles used solid fuel.

The new solid fuel weapons, mounted on mobile launchers, are easier to transport and hide and require less preparation time.

And at least two of them, the KN-23 and the KN-24, could perform low-altitude maneuvers, making them more difficult to intercept.

In a military parade in 2021, North Korea displayed what appeared to be a larger and improved version of the KN-23.

Photos published by North Korean media indicate that it was the new tactical guided missile that North Korea launched in March of that year.

The new missile was developed to be larger than the KN-23 in order to carry a larger warhead and more fuel.

North Korea said the missile could carry a 2.5-ton warhead.

South Korea’s defense minister later admitted that his military did not see part of the North Korean missile’s trajectory due to its maneuvers in the air.

North Korea also tested “long-range cruise missiles” in September 2021.

I call them “strategic weapon”, And indicated that he would arm the new missile with nuclear warheads.

Also in 2021, North Korea began testing what it called a ballistic missile with a removable “hypersonic” sliding warhead.

The country’s missile tests have shown that they are increasingly so harder to intercept.

In addition, since 2015, it has been testing submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

During military parades in 2020 and 2021, North Korea displayed what appeared to be two updated versions of its ballistic missiles launched from the Pukguksong submarine.

It currently has only one submarine capable of launching a ballistic missile, but says it is building a new one with greater capabilities.

Arsenal is not a bargaining chip, says Kim Jong-un North Korea has one of the largest standing armies in the world, with over a million troops.

But much of their equipment is old and outdated, and the army is out of fuel and spare parts.

She tried to remedy her shortcomings by building nuclear weapons, which she believes are primarily deterrents.

In a speech to the Supreme People’s Assembly in September, Kim said the North will not give up its nuclear weapons as long as nuclear weapons and “imperialism” exist on Earth.

He said: “We drew the line of no recoil regarding our nuclear weapons so that there are no more negotiations on them.

“Pyongyang has launched a dizzying race to build an arsenal containing the kind of advanced capabilities that can be found in the United States or Russia,” said Adam Mount, a researcher at the Federation of American Scientists.

“But, for the most part, they were single-use demos: Pyongyang tests the system once, then moves on to the next.

It is not so clear whether they will complete the tests or implement some or all of these systems.

Choe Sang-Hun is the head of the New York Times Seoul office. He covers news from North and South Korea.

Victoria Kim is a correspondent in Seoul who focuses on live news coverage. You joined the Times in 2022. @vicjkim

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