North Korea’s Kim hails ‘new’ weapon thought to be hypersonic missile

Nuclear-armed North Korea on Tuesday touted the successful test of “a new-type weapon” two days earlier, an apparent hypersonic missile and glide vehicle that it is developing as a means of besting enemies’ defenses.

Leader Kim Jong Un and his daughter and presumed successor, Ju Ae, oversaw the test Sunday, which the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said was “of great significance” to the country’s rapid development of advanced arms. 

The KCNA report did not mention the type of weapon or other details of the test, but Kim said the “demonstration of ultra-modern defense technology” was of “weighty significance in the state’s readiness for war and the future development of the armed forces.”

“The enemy will know better what such progress means without any explanation in the aspect of military technology,” KCNA quoted Kim as saying, with the North Korean strongman adding that the successful test “would give the enemy an incurable headache and a very cruel and unavoidable blow.”

Japan said Sunday that the North had fired off two ballistic missiles from its eastern coast into waters outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, with the first traveling some 440 kilometers and a second missile fired hours later flying some 590 km. Seoul said the first missile had traveled 450 km and the second, 600 km.

Photographs ​released by KCNA on Tuesday showed two missiles tipped with what appeared to be upgraded conical, finned hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) being fired from launcher trucks. 

A missile is test-fired at an undisclosed location in North Korea in this image released Tuesday. | KCNA / KNS / VIA AFP-JIJI

Two other images showed ⁠Kim and his teenage daughter viewing a screen displaying a map of the country’s east coast ⁠and the “flight trajectory” of a “Hwasong-11-ma-1” missile. Pyongyang has previously described its Hwasong-11 series of missiles as hypersonic. 

A red line showing one of the missile’s trajectory appeared to show it performing a pull-up maneuver — one used to evade defense — at a low altitude.

At the top of the screen, text identifies the missile’s launch time and speed, as well as distance traveled —  908.2 km, a figure vastly farther than the Japanese and South Korean estimates. The reason for the discrepancy was not clear, but the North has long been known to exaggerate its capabilities for deterrent effects.

HGVs are launched aboard missiles before separating and approaching a target. Contrary to their name, speed is not the key feature. Rather, it is the weapons’ maneuverability: They can change trajectory during flight, making them difficult to intercept.

The North has in recent years developed a spate of weapons better equipped for defeating missile defenses.

Markus Schiller, an expert on missile technology, wrote on social media platform X that the test likely involved a KN-23 booster, a missile also known as a Hwasong-11A, fired on a depressed trajectory, with the ballistic flight around 500km to 600 km and an HGV glide of up to 1,000 km.

It last tested hypersonic missiles in early January, when Kim linked a military drill featuring the weapons system to an unnamed “recent geopolitical crisis” — an apparent reference to the U.S. toppling of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro days earlier. 

Pyongyang has appeared to be attempting to normalize its missile testing, calling the latest launches part of “regular activities” of the country’s Missile Administration and its defense science research institutes.

Analysts say the powerful new systems are intended to strike U.S. and allied bases in Japan and South Korea, which host the bulk of American forces in the region, in the event of a conflict.