North Korea says it has tested a new ICBM engine

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea said on Friday it had successfully tested a powerful new missile engine this week, indicating the country was working to build a ICBM of solid fuel, a new weapon that their leader, Kim Jong Unit wanted to add to its growing nuclear arsenal.

Under Kim’s watchful eye, engineers from North Korea’s Academy of Defense Sciences conducted a ground test of a “high-thrust solid-fuel engine” on Thursday at the Sohae satellite launch base in Tongchang- re. The news agency reported on Friday.

“This major test has provided solid scientific-technological assurance for the development of yet another new-type strategic weapons system,” the news agency said in its English-language cable.

The agency released photos it said showed the engine, “the first of its kind in the country,” being tested in a horizontal position.

North Korea he said the test confirmed the engine’s capabilities, including its pushing power.

But, like most of the North’s technical statements, Friday’s report could not be verified independently.

The three ICBMs that North Korea has tested so far – Hwasong-14, Hwasong-15 and Hwasong-17 – use liquid propellants, which missile experts say make it easier for the United States and its allies can attack them preemptively, as it takes hours to load liquid fuel into rockets before launching them.

Under Kim, the country has been trying to convert its missiles to fuel from liquid to solid, which would make them easier to hide and carry, and quicker to throw.

A series of new short-range ballistic missiles that North Korea has tested in recent years used solid fuel.

But Friday’s announcement was the first time North Korea said it had successfully tested a large solid-fuel engine that could be used for an ICBM.

When Kim announced his ambitious weapons buildup program at a Workers’ Party convention in early 2021, it included the development of solid-propellant ICBMs.

North Korea has said its new missile engine could produce 140 tons of thrust.

If the claim is true, it is “an ICBM-class engine,” said Kim Dong-yub, a North Korean weapons expert at North Korean University in Seoul. North Korea’s Hwasong-15 ICBM, which the country claims is capable of reaching the entire U.S. continent, uses a liquid-fuel booster engine capable of producing 160 tons of thrustaccording to missile experts.

The United States and its allies are closely monitoring activities at the Sohae facility, which North Korea says was built to launch satellites.

The country last launched a satellite from there in February 2016.

North Korea has also used the site to test its ballistic missile engines.

A series of UN Security Council resolutions ban North Korea from testing any technology that could be used to make ballistic missiles.

North Korea tested new rocket engines in Sohae before launching tests of new missiles, including medium- and long-range ballistic missiles it tested in 2017.

After the last of those tests in 2017, Kim called a halt to all nuclear and ICBM tests and started diplomacy with the president. Donald Trump.

Kim and Trump have met three times, but their negotiations broke down in 2019 when they couldn’t agree on how to cancel the North’s nuclear weapons program or when to lift sanctions on the country.

Trump once boasted that Kim promised to dismantle the Sohae plant as one of the first steps toward denuclearization.

North Korea began dismantling some of the facilities, but as talks with Trump stalled, it began rebuilding and resumed missile tests.

In 2019, it carried out tests of a new missile engine there.

This year, it has resumed ICBM testing, including the Hwasong-17, its largest long-range liquid-fueled missile.

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