UK Edition
North Korea is believed to be have about 1,000 ballistic missiles, kept under the control of the Strategic Rocket Forces, based in South Pyongan Province outside the capital, Pyongyang.
The majority of the missiles have a short range of between 30 to 300 miles and are aimed at targets in neighbouring South Korea, but the successful testing of North Korea’s first intercontinental ballistic missile in July 2017 brought the world face to face with a frightening new reality.
Pyongyang boasted that the new Hwasong-14, with an estimated effective range of 6,210 miles, gave them the capability of hitting the “heart of the United States” with “large heavy nuclear warheads”.
Both Hawaii and Alaska lie firmly within this missile’s sights, but it could also potentially pose a danger to London, which lies 5,380 miles from North Korea. Moscow, Delhi and Sydney could also be viable targets.
After a year of heavy investment in its missile technology, the regime delivered another wake-up call in November, when it test-fired the Hwasong-15 ICBM, capable of travelling an even further distance of more than 8,000 miles.
It successfully flew for 590 miles, reaching an altitude of 2,781 miles – more than 10 times the height of the international space station – before splashing down 53 minutes later in the Sea of Japan.
The new weapon, which North Korean state media claimed could carry a “super-large heavy warhead”, put the UK, Washington DC and the whole of the continental United States within clear range of Pyongyang’s missile launch sites.
The country’s leader Kim Jong-un proudly stated that the reclusive regime had “finally realised the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force.”
The Hwasong-15, two metres longer than its predecessor, is North Korea’s most sophisticated missile to date, and was launched shortly after Pyongyang carried out its most powerful ever nuclear test – an advanced hydrogen bomb seven times stronger than the one dropped on Hiroshima.
Despite the successful missile test, US and South Korean intelligence analysts do not believe that North Koreans have yet mastered critical missile re-entry technology, terminal stage guidance and warhead activation.
However, according to 38 north, a website run by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC, the performance of the Hwasong-15, a two-stage, liquid-fuelled rocket, could be validated by a “handful of additional flight tests”.
The missile could be capable of delivering a 1,000 kg payload to any point on the US mainland, said 38 North, adding that Pyongyang had “almost certainly developed a nuclear warhead that weighs less than 700 kg, if not one considerably lighter.”
The website concluded that “two or three test firings over the next four to six months may be all that is required before Kim Jong-un declares the Hwasong-15 combat ready”.
As well as nuclear warheads, North Korea is understood to have large stockpiles of chemical weapons, such as sarin, VX gas and the nerve agent tabun, which could theoretically be weaponised and attached to ballistic missiles.
Since 2011, Kim Jong-un has fired more than 90 missiles and conducted four nuclear weapons tests – more than his father, Kim Jong-il and grandfather, Kim Il Sung, launched over a period of 27 years.
A total of 24 missiles were launched in 2017 alone, and the intensity of North Korea’s focus on developing its weapons technology escalated international tensions to the point where military conflict seemed a real possibility.
US President Donald Trump threatened “fire and fury” and to “totally destroy North Korea” if it was forced to defend itself and its allies. Privately, senior US officials briefed that a pre-emptive “bloody nose” strike could be on the cards.
But the world was given a temporary reprieve when Kim Jong-un performed a 360 degree pivot in January, first holding out an olive branch to South Korea by allowing his athletes to attend the Winter Olympics, then by offering to meet President Trump face to face.
The proposed high stake summits between Mr Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in April and with Mr Trump in May offer the first glimpse of peace on the Korean Peninsula in many years.
However, analysts have also warned that Kim Jong-un’s nuclear capabilities are now so far advanced, that the price of failure has never been higher.