While the North has the
bomb, it doesn't have a warhead small enough to put on a long-range rocket. And
it certainly doesn't have a re-entry vehicle to keep that warhead from burning
up in the atmosphere before it could reach a target like, as it has suggested
before, Manhattan.
North Korea on Tuesday suggested it will soon show the world it has
mastered both technologies.
That
would require a huge jump in the North's suspected nuclear capabilities, so it
may be just the latest case of Pyongyang saying with vitriolic propaganda
something it cannot demonstrate in tests. But if it delivers, it will put to
rest one other comforting thought: that it's safe for policymakers in
Washington and elsewhere to take North Korea's claims as mainly just bluster.
"We
have proudly acquired the re-entry technology, possessed by a few countries
styling themselves as military powers, by dint of self-reliance and
self-development," North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was quoted as saying.
The authoritarian country's state-run media reported he made the comment after
meeting scientists and technicians, following what it said was a successful
ground test of a re-entry vehicle.
The
report said Kim ordered the commencement of preparations for a "nuclear
warhead explosion test" and test-firings of "several kinds of
ballistic rockets able to carry nuclear warheads" to be conducted soon.
As with
all such reports, it's hard to separate Pyongyang's wishful thinking from the
current reality.
North
Korea's most likely candidate for an intercontinental ballistic missile is
generally known as the KN-08 — in North Korea it's called the Hwasong. The
three-stage rocket has an estimated range of 5,000-6,000 kilometers
(3,100-3,700 miles), longer if modified further.
That
range would be ample for attacks on U.S. military bases in Japan, but not the
U.S. mainland. A militarized version of the rocket used to put a North Korean
satellite into orbit last month is believed to have — potentially — a much
longer range that could reach the U.S.
A new
version of the KN-08 was displayed at a military parade in October. IHS Jane's
Defense weekly said it featured a smaller and blunter warhead shape "that
could confirm U.S. intelligence assessments and North Korean claims of success
in miniaturizing its nuclear warheads."
But the
Pentagon has often expressed incredulity over the reliability of the KN-08
because North Korea has never tested it "end-to-end" — meaning from
launch through re-entry and warhead delivery — to prove it works.
Just last
week, photos of Kim, splashed across the front page of the ruling party's
Rodong Sinmun newspaper, showed him standing in a hangar filled with ballistic
missiles and looking happily down at a silvery orb about the size of a disco
ball.
Experts
say the object looks very much like a credible nuclear weapon, though it was
clearly a mock-up of whatever device the North may have. Kim and his scientists
certainly wouldn't have stood so close to the real thing without radioactivity
protection gear. Nor would Kim, a chain smoker, likely have been holding a lit
cigarette right next to it.
People
watch a TV screen showing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a news
program, at Seoul Rai …
The
message, however, was obvious: We know what you think our weaknesses are, and
you might consider thinking twice.
"Every
time the North Koreans test another bomb or a missile, I get calls asking what
message the North Koreans are trying to send," wrote Jeffrey Lewis,
director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center
for Nonproliferation Studies, in a recent op-ed in the influential Foreign
Policy magazine.
"Well,
let's see: They've paraded two different ICBMs through Pyongyang, conducted
four nuclear tests, showed us a compact nuclear design sitting next to a modern
re-entry vehicle in front of one of those ICBMs, and hung a giant wall map of
the United States marked with targets and titled 'Mainland Strike Plan,'"
he wrote. "Here's a wild guess: They are building nuclear-armed ICBMs to
strike the United States! Why is this so hard to grasp?"
The
timing of Pyongyang's recent moves is crucial.
It's
facing a new U.N. sanctions package after its Jan. 6 nuclear test — which it
claimed was of an H-bomb — and has significantly amped up its rhetoric amid
unprecedentedly large-scale war games between the U.S. and South Korean
militaries. Those exercises continue through April.
The
country is also conducting a 70-day "loyalty campaign" ahead of a
once-in-a-generation ruling party congress in May. The congress could be
something of a coming-out party for Kim, a venue to emerge from the shadows of
his father and grandfather and more firmly establish himself at home and abroad
as North Korea's supreme leader. He could also lay out his own long-term
domestic and international agenda.
Kim
presumably wants to face these challenges from a position of power — and making
nukes his cause celebre serves that purpose.
Standing
firm on nukes bolsters his credibility with hard-liners in the military and
reinforces his regime's defiant, dangerous reputation with Washington and its
allies. It also has domestic propaganda value, showing how North Korea,
singlehandedly and against all odds, can make breakthroughs few countries have
accomplished.
Of
course, that logic breaks two ways: If the country hasn't made major advances,
exaggerating them is the next best thing, since its technology is notoriously
difficult to evaluate.
But Lewis
and other experts have expressed concern that Washington, in particular, has a
pattern of not taking the North's purported capabilities seriously enough until
a successful test proves their complacency to have been misplaced. While it
might declare success prematurely — most outside experts doubt the recent
H-bomb claims — it has an established track record of eventually getting there.
Seoul,
meanwhile, was holding to its skeptical line.
Its
Defense Ministry said Tuesday it remains unconvinced the North has achieved
re-entry vehicle technology. Spokesman Moon Sang Gyun said the assessment is
based on South Korean and U.S. intelligence. He refused to elaborate.
AP
writers Hyung-jin Kim and Kim Tong-hyung contributed to this report from Seoul.
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