If North Korea’s test of its longest-range missile in five years was not worrying enough, the state’s official media released images showing the Earth it said were taken in space from a rocket designed to deliver a nuclear warhead.
Images of the weekend launch of its Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile were splashed on the country’s biggest newspaper yesterday.
The photographs were taken “by a camera installed at the missile warhead” and released by the country’s Academy of Defense Science, the official Korean Central News Agency reported.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The veracity of the images has not been independently verified.
The missile North Korea fired on Sunday reached a height of about 2,000km, Japan and South Korea reported, the highest apogee of any North Korean missile since 2017.
It has a range of about 4,500km, according to weapons experts, which means it could hit US military bases in Guam.
Pyongyang has so far released two images that appeared to be taken from a camera on the missile re-entry vehicle looking back at the planet, as well as images of the launch.
Weapons expert Ankit Panda said North Korea has previously shown images of the Earth from a missile, with the first time being in May 2017.
Panda, a senior fellow in the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in specialist publication NK News that the launch also marked the 13th flight test of a new rocket engine.
That technology was tested twice last month when North Korea launched a new maneuverable re-entry vehicle-equipped missile.
Prior to the Sunday launch, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had threatened to end his hiatus on tests of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles designed to deliver warheads to the US mainland that he put in place after 2017 to facilitate talks with then-US president Donald Trump.
North Korea has also resumed plutonium-producing operations at its main Yongbyon nuclear site last year, while satellite imagery showed it expanding a plant that enriches uranium for weapons.
Shin Beom-chul, a researcher at the Korea Research Institute for National Strategy, said the images indicated North Korea’s confidence in its technological capability to target Guam.
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
MIXED SOURCING: While Taiwan is expanding domestic production, it also sources munitions overseas, as some, like M855 rounds, are cheaper than locally made ones Taiwan and the US plan to jointly produce 155mm artillery shells, as the munition is in high demand due to the Ukraine-Russia war and should be useful in Taiwan’s self-defense, Armaments Bureau Director-General Lieutenant General Lin Wen-hsiang (林文祥) told lawmakers in Taipei yesterday. Lin was responding to questions about Taiwan’s partnership with allies in producing munitions at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. Given the intense demand for 155mm artillery shells in Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion, and in light of Taiwan’s own defensive needs, Taipei and Washington plan to jointly produce 155mm shells, said Lin,
RSS