ArsTechnica – by Sean Gallagher
On Saturday, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency reported that the North Korean government had conducted a ground test of a new rocket engine intended to power the first stage of an intercontinental ballistic missile. The test, which took place at Sohae Space Center in North Phyongan Province near the Chinese border, was hailed as a success.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un boasted that the engine would make it possible to launch nuclear strikes against the US. “Now the DPRK can tip new type inter-continental ballistic rockets with more powerful nuclear warheads and keep any cesspool of evils in the earth including the US mainland within our striking range and reduce them to ashes,” Kim was quoted as saying, according to North Korea watchdog site NK News.
Photos of the test published by KCNA don’t reveal whether it was a liquid or solid-fuel rocket engine being tested. Late in March, North Korea performed a ground test of a solid-fuel rocket that may have been for an upper stage of the KN-08, also known as the Hwasong-13 (and previously referred to as the No-dong-C)—a road-mobile ICBM that North Korea has been reportedly developing since at least 2011. And on March 9, North Korea’s government announced that it had successfully completed the “standardized” design for a miniaturized nuclear weapon to be carried by ballistic missiles.
Last week, the South Korean government warned that officials now believe North Korea could mount nuclear warheads on the medium-range Rodong ballistic missile system—the missile launched in two tests in March. And North Korea claimed the missile tests involved a successful test of ICBM reentry vehicle technology—the portion of a missile required to protect a warhead as it reenters the atmosphere in the terminal phase of its flight.
The ICBM capability is part of what Kim said was an essential development of a nuclear deterrent capability, addressing “the need to diversify nuclear attack means at a higher level to cope with the ever-more increasing nuclear threats and arbitrariness of the US imperialists and thus decisively counter nukes in kind.”
As much as I do not like the possibilities, NK has every right to perfect it’s rocket technology. I am not so much concerned with NKs ambitions as I am with who the people are that are funding NK. There is a lot more money involved than would have from China.
Careful, Korea! We’ll lob a Rothschild Bank onto your country, and REALLY f#@k you over!