Pyongyang recently set a goal of upgrading its conventional weapons capabilities, a move that will likely draw lessons from the battlefield helping Russia.
Pyongyang: North Korea conducted a slew of tests of new armaments this week including an electromagnetic weapon system and an anti-aircraft missile, as it ramps up efforts to upgrade its conventional arms amid Donald Trump’s attacks on US adversaries.
With global attention focused on developments in the Middle East amid a fragile ceasefire between the US and Iran, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said General Kim Jong Sik oversaw the tests conducted over three days from Monday to Wednesday.
Kim said “the electromagnetic weapon and carbon fiber bomb are special assets of strategic nature to be combined with and applied to various military means” in different spheres, according to the KCNA report.
This type of weapon typically uses electromagnetic energy rather than explosives to disrupt or damage targets, especially electronics infrastructure.
The report added that there had also been a test “to verify the combat reliability of the mobile short-range anti-aircraft missile system.”
In addition, further tests were conducted “estimating the combat application and cluster munitions power of tactical ballistic missile warhead,” the report said.
The weapons tests come at a time of heightened geopolitical uncertainty as hostilities rumble on the Middle East, drawing US military assets out of Asia, while Pyongyang continues to deepen its ties with Moscow and build on existing ties with Beijing.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is visiting the North from Thursday, his first trip to the neighbouring country in more than six years.
North Korea has emerged as a key ally for Russia in its fight against Ukraine, sending thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of containers loaded with weapons and ammunition to help Moscow fight Kyiv, according to estimates from Seoul’s spy agency.
Pyongyang recently set a goal of upgrading its conventional weapons capabilities, a move that will likely draw lessons from the battlefield helping Russia.
“The reference to cluster warheads suggests a renewed focus on developing new submunitions, potentially to address deficiencies observed in Hwasong-11a performance by Russia against Ukraine,” said Ankit Panda, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The Hwasong-11 is a short-range missile variant also known as KN-23 or KN-24, which Ukraine has said Pyongyang supplied to Moscow in its war against Kyiv.
Iran has used cluster bombs to attack Israel during the war in the Middle East.
The KCNA report said the latest tests confirmed that surface-to-surface tactical ballistic missiles tipped with a cluster bomb warhead were able to “reduce to ashes any target covering an area of 6.5-7 hectares with the highest-density power.”
North Korea is banned under successive rafts of UN sanctions from testing ballistic missiles.
When asked about South Korea’s ability to defend itself against a potential cluster bomb attack from the North, a spokesman for the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff played down the security threat it presented.
“Our military maintains the capability and readiness to respond overwhelmingly to any provocation by North Korea under the strong South Korea-US combined defense posture,” JCS spokesperson Jang Do-young said at a briefing Thursday.
The series of tests took place as concerns grow over potential security vacuum in the region as the world focuses on the tensions in the Middle East.
US allies in Asia have been pressured by Trump to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz to help defend shipping, putting a strain on their military alliances with the US.
The American-Israeli military campaign against Iran has also drawn away key military resources from the Asia-Pacific region.
“Perhaps most concerning about North Korea’s recent weapons tests is the apparent effort to integrate lessons from Russia’s brutal tactics against Ukraine and Iran’s use of cheaper, asymmetric capabilities to complicate the ‘missile math’ of air defenses in Israel and Arab Gulf states,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.
On Wednesday, South Korea’s military said that the North had launched multiple rounds of ballistic missiles into waters off its east coast.
The launches took place days after a North Korean statement conveyed leader Kim Jong Un’s rare praise for South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung in response to Lee’s expression of regret over unauthorized drone flights that crossed the border into the North’s airspace.
Positive interpretations of the North Korean leader’s remarks were quickly swept aside by the missile tests and a followup statement from Pyongyang saying Kim’s comments were intended as another warning to South Korea.
Any readout from the talks with China’s Wang will also be closely scrutinised.
The visit points to renewed momentum in Pyongyang’s ties with Beijing after strengthening relations with Moscow in recent years.
While the trip may just be the return leg of a visit by North Korea’s foreign minister to China last year, the timing of the visit ahead of Trump’s visit to China next month may fuel speculation over another Trump-Kim meeting.
Trump met with Kim three times during his first presidency.
