North Korea\u00a0s leader Kim Jong Un personally oversaw the successful test of a hypersonic missile, state media reported Wednesday, the second such launch by the nuclear-armed nation in less than a week.<\/p>\n
The missile carrying a “hypersonic gliding vehicle” hit “the set target in waters 1,000 km off,” the official Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) said.<\/p>\n
Photographs posted on the website of Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the ruling Workers\u00a0 Party, showed Kim Jong Un wearing a long black leather coat and using binoculars to watch the missile blast off from his mobile viewing platform.<\/p>\n
“The superior maneuverability of the hypersonic glide vehicle was more strikingly verified through the final test-fire,” the KCNA report said.<\/p>\n
Other images in Rodong Sinmun showed the missile blasting off from land at dawn in a blaze of fire and smoke, and Kim discussing charts with uniformed officials.<\/p>\n
This is the third reported North Korean test of a hypersonic gliding missile to date, following one in September 2021 and one last week, as the country looks to add the sophisticated weapon to its arsenal.<\/p>\n
South Korea\u00a0s military said the Tuesday launch had reached hypersonic speeds and showed clear signs of “progress” from last week\u00a0s test.<\/p>\n
The KCNA report said that the hypersonic glide vehicle “made glide jump flight from 600 km area before making a 240 km corkscrew.”<\/p>\n
Hypersonic missiles travel at speeds of Mach 5 and higher and can manoeuvre mid-flight, making them harder to track and intercept.<\/p>\n
Russia, the United States and China have all said they have successfully tested hypersonic glide vehicles, with Russia generally seen as the world leader in the technology so far.<\/p>\n
In the decade since Kim took power, North Korea has seen rapid advances in its military technology at the cost of international sanctions.<\/p>\n
Hypersonic missiles were listed among the “top priority” tasks for strategic weapons in its current five-year plan, and it announced its first test — of the Hwasong-8 — in September last year.<\/p>\n
“Kim Jong Un\u00a0s attendance at the missile test suggests that the level of completion of the hypersonic missile has reached a satisfactory level,” said Lim Eul-chul, a professor of North Korean studies at Kyungnam University in Seoul.<\/p>\n
– Stalled talks –<\/strong><\/p>\n The Tuesday test came as the UN Security Council met in New York to discuss Pyongyang\u00a0s weapons programs.<\/p>\n US State Department spokesman Ned Price said the launch “violates multiple UN Security Council resolutions.”<\/p>\n The hypersonic tests come as North Korea has refused to respond to US appeals for talks.<\/p>\n At a key meeting of North Korea\u00a0s ruling party last month, Kim vowed to continue building up the country\u00a0s defence capabilities, without mentioning the United States.<\/p>\n Dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang remains stalled and the country is under multiple sets of international sanctions over its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.<\/p>\n The impoverished nation has also been under a rigid self-imposed coronavirus blockade that has hammered its economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" North Korea\u00a0s leader Kim Jong Un personally oversaw the successful test of a hypersonic missile, state media reported Wednesday, the second such launch by the nuclear-armed nation in less than a week. The missile carrying a “hypersonic gliding vehicle” hit “the set target in waters 1,000 km off,” the official Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15088,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15087","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-international"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15087"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15089,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15087\/revisions\/15089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailykashmirpost.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}