By Jun Ji-hye
North Korea might have intended to practice striking targets in South Korea in its latest launch of what is presumed to be a Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM), experts said Monday.
The North fired the missile, Saturday, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). However, the missile exploded soon after liftoff near an airbase in Kusong, North Pyongan Province at around 12:33 p.m.
Military officials and experts here are paying keen attention to the launch site used this time. This was the first time that North Korea launched a Musudan missile from an airbase located more than 100 kilometers north of Pyongyang. It was the North’s seventh launch of the Musudan ― since April it has fired six Musudan missiles near the eastern port city of Wonsan toward the East Sea.
Experts say original targets of the IRBMs, believed to have a range of 3,000 to 4,000 kilometers, are U.S. naval and air bases in Guam, but the targets can be changed in accordance with the launch angle that adjusts the missile range. They say the North might have deliberatively changed the launch site to a northern area this time to practice striking targets closer than those in Guam.
“If North Korea uses an acute high-arc trajectory, the Musudan can strike targets in South Korea,” said Kim Jin-moo, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA). “Okinawa and Guam as well as South Korea could be the targets of the Musudan depending on the launch angle.”
After the isolated state fired the sixth Musudan on June 22, the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) claimed that the launch was successful, noting that the missile reached a maximum altitude of 1,413.6 kilometers and fell precisely onto a designated target 400 kilometers away at sea.
The straight-line distance to the U.S. military bases in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, from the North’s airbase in Kusong is about 400 kilometers. Experts said it would be theoretically possible for the North to strike the U.S. military bases as well as South Korea’s port city of Busan if an acute high-arc trajectory were used.
Kim Dong-yup, a professor at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies (IFES), a research arm of Kyungnam University, also said the North might have intended to use an acute high-arc trajectory this time to reduce the missile range in order for the missile, if the launch was successful, not to invade Japanese air space.
“North Korea probably wanted to test re-entry technology necessary to develop a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile,” he said. “There is a possibility that the North might have changed an engine for the missile this time as it would be necessary for the North to test a new rocket engine that underwent a ground test in April.”
The re-entry technology is necessary to bring a nuclear-armed ballistic missile back into the Earth’s atmosphere, cited as the toughest challenge in developing operational middle- and long-range ballistic missiles. As missiles re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere at Mach 20, the missile’s warhead needs to be capable of withstanding temperatures of around 6,000 to 7,000 degrees Celsius.
Kim added that Pyongyang is expected to fire more Musudans to complete the regime’s nuclear and missile programs.
Other experts noted that the North changed the launch site this time to avoid surveillance by South Korea and the United States.
Regarding the change of the launch site, JCS spokesman Col. Jeon Ha-kyu said, “There could be a number of reasons, and we are currently carrying out an analysis.”
Jeon added that the military is closely monitoring movements of North Korean soldiers in preparation for additional provocations.
The Musudan, also known as the BM-25, is the North’s indigenous variant of the Russian SS-N-6 submarine-launched ballistic missile, known in Moscow as the R-27.