[Saturday was the 105th anniversary of Kim Il-sung’s birth and the North’s most important holiday, called the Day of the Sun. The United States, China and other regional powers had feared that North Korea might mark the occasion by conducting its sixth nuclear test or by launching an intercontinental ballistic missile. The United States sent a naval strike group to the area in a show of force.]
By Choe Sang-Hun
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North
Korea’s first submarine-launched ballistic missile, the Pukguksong-1,
was
among the hardware displayed Saturday in the capital, Pyongyang.
Credit
Wong Maye-E/Associated Press
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SEOUL,
South Korea — North Korea’s
latest military hardware, including what analysts said appeared to be three
kinds of intercontinental ballistic missiles, rolled through the North’s
capital on Saturday, as the country showed off its military might amid heightened
tensions with the United States.
As the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, watched
from a platform, long columns of goose-stepping soldiers, accompanied by a
fleet of tanks, missiles and rocket tubes, marched through a large plaza in the
capital, Pyongyang, that was named after Mr. Kim’s grandfather Kim Il-sung, the
country’s founding president.
Saturday was the 105th anniversary of Kim
Il-sung’s birth and the North’s most important holiday, called the Day of the
Sun. The United States, China and other regional powers had feared that North
Korea might mark the occasion by conducting its sixth nuclear test or by
launching an intercontinental ballistic missile. The United States sent a naval
strike group to the area in a show of force.
But no seismic tremor emanated on Saturday
morning from the North’s nuclear test site, where recent satellite photographs
have shown what appeared to be preparations for an underground detonation.
South Korean analysts said Mr. Kim seemed to
have decided instead to celebrate his grandfather’s birthday not with a nuclear
test or a missile launching, but with a military parade meant to demonstrate
his missile capabilities to his American foes.
To military analysts scrutinizing North
Korea’s broadcast of the parade, the most noteworthy element seemed to be three
types of long-range ballistic missiles, one of them apparently new.
While the North has repeatedly claimed that
it can strike the United States with a nuclear warhead, it has never
flight-tested an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of crossing the
Pacific.
In addition, some analysts doubt that the
country has mastered the skills to build a warhead that can survive re-entry
from space, or one small enough to mount on a long-range missile. They said the
intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, that had been displayed in
recent North Korean military parades might have been mock-ups of systems still
under development.
In a New Year’s Day speech, however, Kim
Jong-un claimed that his country was in the “final stage” of preparations for
its first ICBM test.
One missile showed off on Saturday was the
KN-08, which the North first displayed in a 2012 parade and is widely believed
to have been its first attempt at an intercontinental ballistic missile.
Behind the KN-08 were launching tubes that
analysts said appeared to have been designed for two other kinds of long-range
ballistic missiles. There were multiple examples of each tube; it was
impossible to see what was in them, but analysts said it was likely that they
contained missiles that were either completed or under development.
Kim Dong-yub, a missile expert at the
Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University in Seoul, said one kind
of tube appeared to be for the KN-14, a modified version of the KN-08 that was
first displayed in a parade in 2015, during which the North claimed that its
missiles were tipped with nuclear warheads.
The other tube design was new to the
analysts. “Given the size, it looks like it contains a new ballistic missile
with a range of 6,000 kilometers,” or 3,700 miles, said Shin In-kyun, a
military expert who runs the Korea Defense Network, a civic group specializing
in military affairs. “Officials in the region will scramble to figure out
whether this is a new solid-fuel, long-range ballistic missile the North was
believed to be developing.”
Almost all of the North’s other ballistic
missiles use liquid fuel, which can take hours to load. Solid fuel loads quickly
and is easier to transport; North Korean missiles that use it could be kept on
mobile launching pads, hidden in the country’s elaborate tunnel system and
launched on short notice.
The Pukguksong-2, an intermediate-range
ballistic missile that the North tested in February, uses solid-fuel
technology. That missile was displayed in a parade for the first time on
Saturday. So were the Pukguksong-1 — Pyongyang’s first submarine-launched
ballistic missile, which it successfully tested in August — and the Scud-ER, a
Scud with an extended range, designed to reach American military bases in South
Korea and Japan.
North Korea launched four Scud-ERs
simultaneously last month, some of them splashing down in waters in Japan’s
exclusive economic zone.
The North’s totalitarian government uses
military parades to show off its armed forces to its external enemies and demonstrate
strength to its people, who have long suffered under international sanctions
and economic mismanagement. On Saturday, neat columns of soldiers and citizens
chanted slogans of loyalty to Kim Jong-un and waved pink and red artificial
flowers in synchronized moves.
This year’s parade was watched especially
closely in light of the unusual level of regional tension. A United States
naval strike group led by the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson was sent to the area
in an attempt to deter North Korea from testing another nuclear device or
missile.
Aides to President Trump have said they were
not ruling out military options in dealing with the North.
On Friday, the North Korean military
threatened to launch its own pre-emptive nuclear strikes at American military
bases in South Korea, Japan and beyond. Warning of “storm clouds gathering,”
China, the North’s main ally, urged both sides to exercise restraint.
North Korea kept up its defiant rhetoric on
Saturday. “If they attempt a full-scale war, we will respond with a full-scale
war,” Choe Ryong-hae, a senior official in the ruling Workers’ Party and a key
aide to Mr. Kim, said in a speech before the parade. “If they start a nuclear
war, we will respond with nuclear strikes.”
One surprise from the parade was the
re-emergence of Gen. Kim Won-hong, the former chief of the powerful secret
police, the State Security Ministry.
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service
had said that General Kim was dismissed and demoted in January on charges of
corruption and abuse of power. In recent months, he has been absent from state
functions, including a parliamentary meeting on Tuesday, spurring speculation
that he might have been purged and sent to a re-education camp.
But on Saturday, he was among the generals on
the reviewing stand. His uniform bore his four-star insignia, but he appeared
to have lost a considerable amount of weight.
