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The launch of a Pukguksong-2 medium-range ballistic missile from North Korea on May 21

North Korea has announced that the ballistic missile it launched on May 21 was the Pukguksong-2 and that it means to start deploying the missile. Since the Pukguksong-2 is a solid-fuel missile, it can be quickly prepared for launch. If the missile is actively deployed, it would likely be difficult to detect prior signs of an attack.

“Another fruitful test launch of the surface-to-surface medium-range ballistic missile Pukguksong-2 has been carried out,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on May 22. While the KCNA did not specify the date of the launch, this appears to have been the missile launched the day before. On that day, South Korea’s Joint Chief of Staff concluded that North Korea had launched a ballistic missile with a maximum altitude of 560km and a range of 500km and had speculated that this was a Pukguksong-2.

“The accuracy of the attitude control system has been even more clearly confirmed by images taken with a camera installed in the warhead,” North Korea reported as it released several photos it claims were taken during flight by an onboard camera. This is the first time such photos have been released.

The photos seem designed to flaunt the fact that the Pukguksong-2 warhead descended at the proper angle even during the atmospheric reentry phase. The KCNA described this as “the final test launch before deployment” and reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had given orders for the missile to be “quickly mass produced and provided to the military’s strategic units.”

The Pukguksong-2 is the land-based version of the Pukguksong-1, the submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) that was first unveiled last year. As a solid-fuel missile, it uses the “cold launch” technique, in which the missile is fired into the air by the launcher before its engine ignites. In contrast with a liquid-fuel missile, a solid-fuel missile does not need to be filled with fuel before launch. This means that only a few minutes are required to prepare for launch, down from the 30 minutes to an hour that a liquid-fuel missile usually requires. That makes it even harder to detect signs of a missile launch in advance, prompting concerns that this would incapacitate South Korea’s Kill Chain, which is supposed to carry out a preemptive strike within 30 minutes of indications that North Korea is going to launch a missile. “The Kill Chain already accounts for the time required to fill missiles with fuel. Shifting from liquid fuel to solid fuel would not neutralize the Kill Chain,” said South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo during a meeting of the National Assembly’s National Defense Committee on Feb. 14.

In documents provided to the National Assembly in February, the Defense Ministry categorized the Pukguksong-2 as an “intermediate-range ballistic missile.” An intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) is typically defined as a missile with a range between 3,000 and 5,500 km. But on May 22, a source with the Joint Chiefs of Staff released a revised estimate, stating that “further analysis has shown that the Pukguksong-2 has a range of around 2,000km.” This would mean that the Pukguksong-2 is not an IRBM but a medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM, with a range between 1,000 and 3,000km). On Feb. 13, American expert John Schilling estimated in an article on the North Korean affairs website 38 North that the Pukguksong-2 “could reach a range of at least 1200km,” far shorter than what the Defense Ministry or the Joint Chiefs of Staff had said. Just as with the Rodong missile (which has an estimated range of 1,300km), this missile could reach as far as Japan, the location of bases operated by UN Command where American reinforcements would arrive in the event of a crisis on the Korean Peninsula.

“The ongoing testing is disappointing, it‘s disturbing,” said US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson during an interview with Fox News on May 21. “We’re early in the stages of applying the economic pressure as well as the diplomatic pressure to the regime in North Korea.” This appears to suggest that the US could impose additional sanctions on North Korea in the future.

On May 23, the UN Security Council will hold a closed-door meeting to discuss how to respond to North Korea‘s missile launch.

By Park Byong-su, senior staff writer, and Yi Yong-in, Washington correspondent

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