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The Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile

The US Defense Department said North Korea’s Hwasong-14 missile included a re-entry vehicle (RV). The claim is igniting controversy, as it differs from the assessment the day before by the South Korean Ministry of National Defense, which said the missile’s re-entry had “not been verified.”

Reuters reported Pentagon spokesperson Capt. Jeff Davis as saying at a July 5 press briefing that North Korea’s Hwasong-14 missile was fired from a mobile launcher and confirming the presence of an RV at the missile’s tip. Davis’s claim differs from what was reported by the South Korean Ministry of National Defense the same day to the National Assembly National Defense Committee. At the time, the ministry said the missile was “fired from a fixed launcher, and re-entry, which requires advanced technology, was not verified, which means we can’t conclude that [North Korea’s] ICBM development has been successful.”

“Clearly we watch North Korea very closely,” Davis said of North Korea’s missile launch activities.

Fox News quoted a US government official as saying the US had watched North Korea fuelling the rocket prior to launch. It also reported that while the Pentagon could have made the decision shoot down the ICBM down through its missile defense system, it did not attempt to do so because it concluded the missile posed no threat to North America.

The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff refrained from commenting on July 6 on the discrepancies between the accounts of South Korean and US militaries, saying it needed to confirm Davis’s claims.

“I’ve seen the report, and the mention of a ‘re-entry vehicle being present’ was not a direct quote,” said Joint Chiefs of Staff public affairs office director Roh Jae-chun.

“So we need to confirm in what sense and based on what assessment standards the statement was made,” he added.

Roh also said an RV “could have been attached to an ICBM,” explaining that the inclusion of an RV was a different matter from successful re-entry.

On the question of whether the Hwasong-14 was fired from a mobile or fixed launcher, Roh echoed the ministry’s previous conclusion that the launcher was fixed.

“We confirmed that a fixed mobile launcher was used to temporarily fix [the missile] in place before firing,” he said.

By Park Byong-su, senior staff writer

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