(Bloomberg) — North Korea said it test-fired a “hypersonic” missile on Wednesday for the second time in about five months, as it continues to develop strategic weapons in a challenge to the U.S. and its allies.
The missile “precisely hit” a target 700 kilometers away, the official KCNA news agency said on Thursday. The test launch “clearly demonstrated the control and stability of the hypersonic gliding warhead,” the report said.
“The successive successes in the test launches in the hypersonic missile sector have strategic significance,” KCNA added.
The missile test comes after leader Kim Jong Un indicated he was more interested in bolstering his arsenal than returning to stalled nuclear talks with the Biden administration. Earlier this year, Kim cited such technology as a goal while outlining a broad expansion of nuclear forces that could both threaten the U.S. mainland and American allies Japan and South Korea.
In September, North Korea had hailed a successful test of a hypersonic missile that it called a weapon of “great strategic significance” to the country’s arsenal. References by Pyongyang to a weapon’s “strategic” value usually indicate it’s intended to be armed with a nuclear warhead.
While ballistic missiles are typically “hypersonic” — traveling in excess of five times the speed of sound — North Korea is referring to the use of high-speed gliders to carry warheads past missile defenses. KCNA said Thursday that North Korean officials “assessed the performance of the new lateral movement technique applied to the detached hypersonic gliding warhead.”
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called this week’s launch “extremely regrettable” and said his government would step up surveillance. North Korea’s most powerful ally, China, called on all parties to “act prudently” and stay in the right direction of talks and consultations, Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular press briefing in Beijing.
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said it was consulting closely with allies. “The ballistic missile launch highlights the destabilizing impact of the DPRK’s illicit weapons program,” it said in a statement, referring to North Korea by its formal name.
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