N. Korea is bluffing about missile re-entry capability

By Jun Ji-hye

South Korean military and defense analysts are questioning the credibility of North Korea’s latest claim that it has acquired missile re-entry technology necessary to bring a nuclear-armed ballistic missile back into the Earth’s atmosphere, saying that Pyongyang has yet to conduct any test of such technology.

They said that Pyongyang is apparently bluffing in an apparent show of defiance against tougher U.N. sanctions and ongoing Seoul-Washington joint military drills with no clear evidence that it possesses such technology.

Their evaluations come after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un claimed through the state-run media, the Korea Central News Agency (KCNA), on Tuesday that the regime has “proudly acquired the re-entry technology, thus making a great progress in the ballistic rocket technology that helps strengthen the independence.”

Kim made the remark while overseeing an environmental simulation for missile re-entry technology, according to the KCNA.

On the same day, Pyongyang’s main newspaper Rodong Sinmun published photos of Kim with a mushroom-shaped object, which looks like a drawing of missile re-entry technology.

“The military’s assessment is that the North has yet to acquire the re-entry technology,” the Ministry of National Defense spokesman Moon Sang-gyun told a regular briefing. “What the North announced today (Tuesday) was just its unilateral claim.”

Moon said that the missile re-entry technology can be only verified through a full test, but Pyongyang has yet to test-fire a Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile with a range of 3,000 kilometers, or a KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with a range of more than 10,000 kilometers. He added that the North is believed to have re-entry technology for its short-range missiles.

Securing missile re-entry technology is cited as the toughest challenge for the North of developing an operational ICBM capable of striking the U.S. mainland. As the ICBM re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere at Mach 20, the missile’s warhead needs to be capable of withstanding temperatures of around 6,000-7,000 degrees Celsius.

Experts on North Korean issues also downplayed the North’s claim of the re-entry capability, saying the regime has yet to demonstrate such ability, thus it seems that the North has yet to master the technology, though the regime could possibly know about the theory.

“North Korea is highly likely bluffing again,” Kim Dong-yup, professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES), a research arm of Kyungnam University, told reporters.

He said that the North recently claimed that it has miniaturized nuclear warheads and deliberately disclosed photos of KN-08s, and now, it is claiming that it has secured the missile re-entry technology.

“The North is apparently intending to show off its nuclear capability as both South Korean and the U.S. governments as well as a number of experts are questioning Pyongyang’s claim,” he said.

But some experts noted that the North might have made the claim of the missile re-entry capability as part of its plans to test-fire ICBMs in the near future.

The KCNA reported earlier in the day that Kim Jong-un gave orders to conduct a test for estimating the heat stability of a rocket warhead tip and the erosion of heat-resistant coating material.

“The simulation was conducted in such way of verifying the thermodynamic structural stability of newly-developed heat-resisting materials through measurement of the erosion degree and internal temperature of the tip under the high pressure and thermal flow caused by aerodynamic heating when a ballistic missile reenters the atmosphere. The test results met the needs for all the technical parameters,” the KCNA said.

A report also said that the test proved that the tip’s thermodynamic structural stability is ensured under the pressure equivalent to actual environmental conditions and that the heat flow was about five times stronger than conditions during a ballistic missile re-entry and, therefore guarantees the reliability of inter-continental ballistic rocket warhead reentry.

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