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A photo from the May 15 edition of the Rodong Sinmun newspaper

On May 14, just four days after Moon Jae-in was inaugurated as president of South Korea, North Korea launched another ballistic missile. Regardless of what Pyongyang may have intended, the likely result is that the new administration will have fewer options to work with. The remarks Moon made during a meeting of the standing committee of the National Security Council that he chaired on May 14 can be interpreted in the same context: “We must respond firmly to provocations to prevent North Korea from coming to the wrong conclusion. We must show the North that even if dialogue is possible, it will only be possible when there is a change in North Korea’s attitude.”

Various experts say that North Korea launched the missile at a high angle, which means that its range can only be guessed at, and that it aimed for the missile to hit a section of the East Sea that is outside of Japan’s territorial waters. This shows that North Korea took elaborate technical steps to tone down the geopolitical impact of the missile launch.

There are several possible interpretations of North Korea’s intentions. Some point to the fact that May 14 marked the opening ceremony of the Belt and Road Summit for international cooperation, into which China has poured a great deal of energy, to argue that Pyongyang was trying to send a warning message to China, which has recently been helping put pressure on the North.

It is also possible that this was an attempt to sound out the new government of Moon Jae-in. A senior South Korean government official offered a different interpretation: “The three ballistic missile tests that were carried out in April all appeared to fail, but this test seems to have achieved some degree of success. I think that North Korea carried out the test launch according to its own plan rather than deliberately timing it to overlap with the launch of the new government or the Belt and Road Summit.”

Photos from the Mar. 7 edition of the Rodong Sinmun newspaper

With North Korea’s missile launch coming before Moon has even appointed his foreign policy and security team, the new administration is about to get even busier. Despite enjoying momentum in inter-Korean relations thanks to the work of former presidents Kim Dae-jung (in office 1998-2003), Roh Moo-hyun (2003-08) had to delay his summit with North Korea until the end of his term because of the issues of North Korean nuclear weapons and missiles. “After the breakdown of inter-Korean relations under the administrations of Lee Myung-bak [2008-13] and Park Geun-hye [2013-16], the Moon administration has to reset relations with North Korea, so [the North Korean missile provocation] is putting Moon in a difficult position at the very beginning of his time in office,” said Kim Chang-soo, director of the Korea National Strategy Institute.

“The US is trying to use pressure to bring North Korea to the negotiating table, while North Korea means to strike a deal with the US after acquiring a definite threat by improving its missiles as much as possible. But putting China and South Korea in an awkward position with unending provocations will ultimately not help Pyongyang create the conditions for dialogue with the US,” Kim added.

“As we saw in Oslo, Norway [where a meeting between the US and North Korea was recently held], the North is continuing to act according to a timeline of its own devising. The North will attempt to do whatever it can to acquire the ICBM card before entering negotiations with the US,” said Kim Dong-yeop, professor at the Kyungnam University Institute for Far Eastern Studies.

of a missile test launch the previous day. (Yonhap News)

North Korean missile reaches 2,000km altitude, showing technical advancement

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff have declined to offer any information about the missile’s performance aside from the fact that it flew for more than 700km, citing the “need for further analysis.” But according to Japanese authorities, the missile is estimated to have reached an altitude of more than 2,000km and flew for 30 minutes, falling into the East Sea before reaching Japan‘s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

This is the first time that a North Korean missile has reached an elevation higher than 2,000km. The previous record for elevation was set by a Musudan missile in June 2016 that reached 1,413.6km (according to North Korean reports). Experts believe that this missile was launched at a high angle. The Associated Press quoted David Wright, a physicist with the Union of Concerned Scientists as saying that the missile might have a range of 4,500km if fired at a normal angle. None of the missiles that North Korea has test launched thus far are capable of flying that far. Wright surmised that this could be the new two-stage liquid fuel mobile missile that was unveiled during the military parade commemorating the birthday of North Korean founding leader Kim Il-sung on Apr. 15.

By Jung In-hwan, staff reporter, and Park Byong-su, senior staff writer

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