CNN
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North Korean chief Kim Jong Un is planning to construct “the world’s most powerful” nuclear drive, state information company KCNA reported on Sunday.
The “ultimate goal” behind North Korea’s nuclear program was to own an “absolute force, unprecedented in the century,” Kim stated Saturday as a part of an order selling dozens of army officers, the company reported.
The order comes after what North Korea stated was a “test firing of a new kind” of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on November 18.
The missile was a Hwaseong-17, in accordance with KCNA, an enormous rocket that’s theoretically able to delivering a nuclear warhead to the United States mainland.
Kim counseled the officers who developed the brand new missile in his feedback.
He known as the missile “the world’s strongest strategic weapon” and stated it represented “a wonderful leap forward in the development of the technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles.”
With the event of the brand new ICBM, Kim stated North Korea had demonstrated to the world “the confident, ever-victorious future of our state advancing toward the goal of building the world’s strongest army.”
In a letter despatched to Kim lately, scientists from North Korea’s Academy of Defense Science stated the check firing marked a “great historic victory” for the nation and demonstrated North Korea’s sovereignty.
Kim himself attended the launch with a baby believed to be his daughter, Ju Ae.
Pyongyang additionally launched a video of the missile launch, solely the third time it has accomplished so since 2017, in accordance with Ankit Panda, senior fellow within the nuclear coverage program on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
While the check did present Pyongyang can launch a big ICBM and preserve it aloft for greater than an hour, North Korea nonetheless hasn’t demonstrated the power to position a warhead atop a long-range ballistic missile – projectiles which can be fired into house – that is ready to survive the fiery reentry into Earth’s environment.
But analysts say that with repeated checks, the North Koreans are refining their capabilities.