Fake nukes: North Korea’s missile test wasn’t real, says Seoul

Defence officials said the ICBM that Pyongyang claimed to have fired was actually a modified version of a smaller one.

New or old? The missile launched last Thursday. Picture: Korean Central News Agency via AFP

North Korea faked a successful test of a “monster missile” last week after the intercontinental-range weapon exploded in mid-air, the South Korean government has said.

Defence officials told South Korean MPs that the Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile that Pyongyang claimed to have fired on Thursday was actually a modified version of the smaller Hwasong-15, last tested in 2017, before a moratorium on ICBM and nuclear warhead tests that has since been abandoned.

The apparent deception, which included a Hollywood-style film of the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, was made after an abortive attempt on March 16, which is said to have rained debris over Pyongyang.

Despite remarkable advances, Kim’s ICBMs, his most powerful weapons, are still in development and may not be capable of their strategic function — delivering nuclear warheads to the mainland US.

The missile fired last Thursday from Sunan airport in Pyongyang flew at a steep angle to a maximum height of 6250km. It travelled 1090km and landed in the Sea of Japan.

North Korea said if fired on a flatter trajectory, the missile would have had a range of 14,500km, 2900km further than the Hwasong-15 and sufficient to strike almost any point on the planet.

State media featured Kim giving the order to launch in a film that showed him in slow motion, wearing a leather jacket and swaggering with his generals.

The Hwasong-17, first shown at a military parade in 2020, is one of the biggest missiles in the world fired from a mobile launcher.

The South Korean defence ministry said on Wednesday the successful launch had been a Hwasong-15 adjusted to fly further and for longer, possibly by reducing the size of its dummy warhead. “Although the projectile fired on March 24 looks like the Hwasong-17 … our assessment is it is more similar to the Hwasong-15.”

Analysis has shown the film of Kim at the launch was not taken at the time claimed. Shadows indicate it was shot in the morning but the test was in the afternoon.

Last Thursday was overcast, but skies were clear — as in the film — eight days earlier, at the time of the failed test. The NK News website showed film of a red ball of smoke from an apparent explosion, and quoted people in Pyongyang who heard explosions overhead.

Ha Tae-keung, a member of South Korea’s defence committee, said the explosion had damaged homes.

“Fragments rained on Pyongyang,” he told journalists.

Japan still believes the weapon tested was a new one. The US defence department said it was still analysing the test. The Pentagon said: “We remain concerned about the North Koreans, their attempt to improve their nuclear capability, as well as their ballistic missile capability.”

The Times