North Korea unveils home-made engine for missile capable of striking U.S.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends a demonstration of a new large-caliber multiple rocket launching system in a photo released March 22 by the official Korean Central News Agency. (© KCNA/Reuters)

By Anna Fifield-April 8

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.

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.

“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.

“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.

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.

 

[North Korean restaurant workers defect en masse to South Korea]

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.

“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.

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.

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 tomake a nuclear warhead small enough to attach to a missile.

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.

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.

“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.

“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.

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.

 

[North Korean restaurant workers defect en masse to South Korea]

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.

“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.

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.

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 tomake a nuclear warhead small enough to attach to a missile.

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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Anna Fifield is The Post’s bureau chief in Tokyo, focusing on Japan and the Koreas. She previously reported for the Financial Times from Washington DC, Seoul, Sydney, London and from across the Middle East.