This trial participates in the “development of a new type of strategic weapon”, according to the state agency KCNA.
mo12345lemonde with AFP
This time, it is not a missile. The KCNA state agency announced, Friday, December 16, that North Korea successfully tested a “solid fuel engine with a strong thrust” with the objective of developing a new weapon. Supervised by manager Kim Jong-un, this test “provided a scientific and technological guarantee as to the development of a new type of strategic weapon”, reported Kcna.
Images of this conclusive test, conducted at the Satellite launch base in Sohae in Tongchang-Ri (northwest of the country), showed the leader of North Korea observing the static shooting of the Engine, which spats bright yellow flames.
Despite international sanctions, Pyongyang continues to strengthen its military arsenal, notably with intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). All are currently in liquid ergols and, in 2021, Kim Jong-un had made solid fuel engines a strategic priority in order to evolve towards more advanced projectiles.
Liquid ergol missiles are indeed more difficult to use and require more preparation time, according to analysts. Slower, they are also more easily identified and destroyed by the enemy. On the contrary, solid fuel projectiles are “more mobile, rapid to launch and hide as well as to use during a conflict,” says Leif-Eric Easley, professor at EHWA University in Seoul. According to him, the deployment of this new technology would make the north-Korean nuclear arsenal “more dangerous”.
“irreversible” nuclearization of the country
The engine test is only a step and it remains complicated to know where the country is in the development of this type of missile, undergo specialists. It is indeed “difficult to evaluate the power of impairment” during this test, the researcher at the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), Joseph Dempsey.
This year, Kim Jong-Un decreed that the nuclearization of North Korea was “irreversible” and expressed his desire to have the most powerful nuclear arsenal in the world. Intercontinental ballistic missiles with solid fuel, launched from land or sea, would be part of it.
Pyongyang carried out an unprecedented series of military tests this year, including the most advanced ICBM launch in November to date. South Korea and the United States have been alerting for months to the possibility of a new nuclear test in North Korea. It would be the seventh in its history.