North Korea appears to have tested a hypersonic weapon that could evade missile defenses and prove hard to track and intercept, analysts told AFP Wednesday.
South Korea and Japan said Pyongyang fired two short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast Sunday, condemning the launches as threats to regional peace and security.
North Korea did not identify the weapon, saying only that its missile bureau had "successfully tested a new type of weapon" in a demonstration of "ultra-modern defense technology.”
Analysts said the weapon appeared to be an upgraded version of North Korea's Hwasongpho-11Ma-1 hypersonic short-range ballistic missile.
With a range of 450 to 600 kilometers (around 280-370 miles), the hypersonic missile is "designed to strike key military facilities across the Korean peninsula within an extremely short period of time,” Yang Moo-jin, former president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told AFP.
Images released by Pyongyang's state media showed leader Kim Jong Un and his daughter Ju Ae watching a screen displaying what appeared to be the missile's flight path, labelled "Hwasongpho-11Ma-1 flight trajectory.”
The North Korean leader warned this week that the weapon's advances would give adversaries "an incurable headache and a very cruel and unavoidable blow,” according to the official Korean Central News Agency.
Despite long-running UN sanctions, North Korea has enshrined its status as a nuclear-armed state in law, with its leaders repeatedly declaring its atomic arsenal permanent and irreversible.
North Korea has also secured critical backing from Russia alongside its traditional ally China, leaving fewer incentives for it to engage in renewed diplomacy with Washington.
"North Korea may be talking up its own capabilities, but it has clearly reached the point where it can launch weapons of this caliber," Ahn Chan-il, a researcher originally from North Korea, told AFP.
"I believe these tests are less about upgrading its own military capabilities than testing weapons produced by its defense industry to meet Russia's wartime demand."
Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, North Korea has become a key ally of the Kremlin, sending troops to support Moscow's war effort in return for economic benefits and military technology, analysts say.
Hong Sung-pyo, senior researcher at the Seoul-based Korea Institute for Military Affairs, said that if used against South Korea, the hypersonic weapon would pose a serious threat.
"But a single successful test is not enough to prove its capabilities. If deployed operationally, however, it would be extremely difficult to defend against," he told AFP.
"Because it maneuvers as it descends during the terminal phase of flight, it is harder to track and intercept than a conventional ballistic missile -- particularly at hypersonic speeds."
