North Korea touts new weapons system described as hypersonic - TimesLIVE

North Korea said on Tuesday its latest missile tests involved a new weapons system of “great significance”, with photos indicating it launched a missile previously described as hypersonic.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the weapon’s development would strengthen the country’s war readiness and give its enemies an “incurable headache”, the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said. He did not describe what the weapon was.

Kim observed Sunday’s tests with his teenage daughter, widely seen as a potential successor.

South Korea’s military detected North Korea firing two short-range missiles three hours apart from the eastern coastal Wonsan area on Sunday. South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said the missiles flew about 450km and 600km toward the sea, while Japan’s military said they landed in waters outside the country’s exclusive economic zone.

The launches extended a recent run in military displays, including live-fire exercises and the commissioning of a new warship, as Kim continues to flaunt his growing nuclear programme despite US calls to revive diplomacy.

After years of intensified testing, Kim has an extensive arsenal of nuclear-capable missiles, including long-range weapons potentially capable of reaching the US mainland and shorter-range systems designed to overwhelm missile defences in South Korea and Japan.

Among the weapons North Korea has tested in recent years are missile systems fitted with purported hypersonic weapons designed to travel at more than five times the speed of sound. Their speed and manoeuvrability are intended to help them evade regional missile defences, but some experts have questioned whether they have consistently reached the speeds claimed by the North during tests.

KCNA’s photos of Sunday’s tests showed what appeared to be two missiles tipped with conical, finned vehicles being fired from launcher trucks. Kim is seen looking at a monitoring screen that identifies the missile as a Hwasong-11Ma, a system North Korea has previously described as hypersonic.

Graphics on the screen showed a missile trajectory overlaid on a map, along with figures for a speed of 2,146m per second, an altitude of 35.8km and a range of 908.2km. The reported distance exceeded the flight range announced by South Korea’s military.

Jang Do-young, a spokesperson for South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff, said the military was assessing the details from the North Korean report and cautioned that the North’s claims about missile capabilities “cannot be 100% trusted”.

The launches were the latest in a series of weapons demonstrations by North Korea even after US President Donald Trump scaled back a joint military exercise with South Korea last month in an apparent effort to revive diplomacy with Kim, who has called such drills invasion rehearsals. Kim’s sister and senior official, Kim Yo Jong, dismissed Trump’s overture, saying shortening the drill would not change its “provocative, aggressive nature”.

North Korea has a long history of ratcheting up pressure on South Korea when it doesn’t get what it wants from the US, and Kim Jong Un has recently taken a particularly hostile stance toward Seoul, suspending virtually all inter-Korean co-operation and dialogue and declaring the South a permanent enemy.

In a written response to questions by The Associated Press, liberal South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, who favours engagement with the North, expressed hope on Tuesday that a resumption of Trump-Kim diplomacy would help reopen dialogue between the two Koreas. He called for a practical, step-by-step approach to North Korea’s denuclearisation, with incentives offered as Pyongyang makes progress toward eliminating its nuclear weapons.

Emboldened by his advancing nuclear arsenal and deepening ties with Russia and China, experts said Kim likely sees himself as having greater leverage in any renewed diplomacy with Trump. His government has said Washington must first drop its “hostile policy” — a term Pyongyang mainly uses to describe US-led sanctions and joint US-South Korea military drills — and abandon demands for North Korea’s denuclearisation as a precondition for talks.