Kim Jong-un’s secret missile base spotted on China border

North Korea has a missile base near its China border capable of storing weapons with the range to strike the US, satellite images show.

North Korea has built a missile base near its border with China that is capable of storing weapons with the range to strike the United States, satellite images show.

A report by a Washington think tank describes in detail the features of the Hoejung-ni base, whose reinforced underground bunkers are 16 miles from the Chinese border. It quotes “informed sources”, likely to be in US intelligence, who believe that the country’s most powerful weapons, potentially capable of carrying nuclear warheads, are to be deployed at the base.

“The Hoejung-ni missile operating base will, according to informed sources, likely house a regiment-sized unit equipped with intercontinental ballistic missiles,” says the report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on its North Korea website, Beyond Parallel.

“When this occurs, the unit will represent a vital component of what is presumed to be North Korea’s evolving ballistic missile strategy, expanding existing strategic-level deterrence and strike capabilities.”

Base entrance and checkpoint. Picture: CSIS.

Hoejung-ni’s entrances are disguised with trees and other vegetation. The base consists of a large underground bunker at least 375 metres long and two drive-through “hardened missile checkout facilities”, large shelters reinforced by layers of concrete and soil and used for fuelling, arming and maintaining weapons.

“Each … shelter measures approximately 35 metres long, has a 25-metre opening at each end, and is covered with soil and rocks with vegetation on top,” the report says. “The length and size of the openings are of sufficient size to accommodate all known, and likely planned, Korean People’s Army ballistic missile … launchers.”

During the 1950-53 Korean War, bombing destroyed 85 per cent of buildings in North Korea, and since then the regime has constructed as many as 8,000 underground bunkers and tunnels in which strategic assets, including missiles, are hidden.

Rather than being fired from deep silos, North Korea’s ballistic missiles are designed to be loaded on to vehicles known as transporter-erector-launchers, and quickly dispersed across a wide area, making it more difficult for an enemy to locate and destroy them.

Apart from heavy physical barriers, the base has another form of protection, its proximity to China. US and South Korean commanders would hesitate to use, for example, tactical nuclear weapons against it, for fear that they might stray into Chinese territory.

According to the report, construction at Hoejung-ni first began 20 years ago, and it is one of 20 such bases which have never been acknowledged by Pyongyang. It is evidently known to US intelligence, however. Joseph Bermudez, lead author of the CSIS report, has an intelligence background.

The revelations come at a moment when anxiety is mounting about North Korea’s missile program and its intentions. Already it has fired more missiles this year than in all of last year. The nine tests have included medium and short-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and hypersonic ballistic missiles whose high speed and manoeuvrability make it difficult to intercept them with conventional missile defence shields. Last week’s test of an intermediate range missile was from Chagang province, where Hoejung-ni is located.

Ahn Young-joon/APPyongyang has stepped up testing of its ballistic missiles, with more fired so far this year than in the whole of 2021.

The Times.