Kim Jong Un's Big Nuclear Push Is Closing In on America
Kim Jong Un has sped up North Korea's nuclear program since he took power in late 2011, testing more powerful weapons and developing longer-range missiles to carry them.
On July 4, North Korea said it had successfully test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile called the Hwasong-14, a claim that brings the isolated state closer to its aim of building a device capable of hitting the U.S.
mainland with a nuclear warhead. The United Nations Security Council will hold an emergency meeting later Wednesday after the U.S. confirmed North Korea's rocket launch was its first intercontinental ballistic missile.
Still, the launch risks a serious escalation with North Korea's neighbors and the U.S. over its weapons program. The regime is thought to possess rockets that can hit South Korea and Japan with as many as 20 atomic bombs.
David Wright, a co-director of the Union of Concerned Scientists, wrote on the group's website that the projectile had the potential to reach all of Alaska and could be a modified version of the Hwasong-12 missile that was launched in May.
Jeffrey Lewis, a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, California, said: "It's an ICBM for sure. It appears to be a new design that we had not previously seen.
The North Koreans seem to have made quite a lot of progress in the past year.". "It demonstrated that it could go 6,700 kilometers. There is no reason to think that's the max," he said.
"I don't want to speculate until we can measure everything carefully, but it's possible that it could strike targets in the continental U.S.".
While the regime already possesses the Taepodong-2, which can reach all parts of the U. , analysts say it has been used only for launching satellites into orbit and probably wouldn't be suitable for the delivery of nuclear warheads.
More worrisome is the yet-to-be tested KN-08, a road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile. Its range of about 11,500 kilometers (7,100 miles) would threaten a host of major U.S.
cities. At the beginning of the year, Kim said that North Korea was in the "last stage" of preparing to test-fire an ICBM—prompting U.S. President Donald Trump to tweet: "It won't happen!".
Kim has successfully fired short and intermediate-range rockets dozens of times in the past few years. A military parade he oversaw on April 15 also suggested that the regime has two different ICBMs under development in addition to the KN-08.
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