North Korea is focusing on cruise missile development as part of efforts to increase the threat it poses to the United States and South Korea. Pyongyang’s development of nuclear-powered submarines, however, remains incomplete.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Daily NK source inside the North Korean military said Friday that “since we haven’t completed the development of nuclear-powered submarines, we must create chaos in terms of launch sites and get as close to the strike point as possible while protecting our submarines. If we can do that, we’ll dominate the enemy with our existing weapons systems.”
In other words, to threaten the United States, North Korea must protect its submarines as they approach U.S. territory. To do that, the country must be able to quickly deploy cruise missiles to the area.
Cruise missiles kill three birds with one stone – they evade air defenses by flying low, they are highly accurate, and they can protect the location of the submarines from which they are launched through evasive flight. This is why the North Korean government has recently been racing to develop cruise missiles, an area that has seen less development than other kinds of weaponry.
North Korea test-fired its first Pulhwasal-3-31 cruise missile on Jan. 24. On Jan. 28, the country claimed to have test-fired the weapon from a submarine, describing the missile as a newly developed submarine-launched cruise missile.
On Feb. 15, North Korea first revealed the name of a new cruise missile system – the Padasuri-6 – through the Rodong Sinmun and other state media, which also reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un had presided over the “evaluation test-firing” of the new surface-to-surface cruise missile for the navy the previous day.
“Evaluation test firings” randomly verify the capabilities of produced weapons, indicating that the weapons in question have been used in the field. This makes the Padasuri-6 a serious threat to South Korean warships operating along the inter-Korean borders on the Yellow and East Seas.
Spoils of war
Meanwhile, some North Korean officials are urging the country to secure as much weapons technology as possible from Russia before Moscow’s war in Ukraine ends.
As the war drags on, North Korea has grown closer to Russia, with the two nations actively cooperating on weapons. However, many North Koreans are concerned that once the war ends, obtaining technology from Russia could become more difficult given the unpredictability of the international environment afterward, the source said.
“The leadership wants as much technological cooperation with Russia as possible in a short period,” the source said. “They continue to stress the need for a [technological] leap forward before the war ends.”
Translated by David Black. Edited by Robert Lauler.
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