[Column] A four-year trajectory from ‘projectile’ to ‘missile’

Chae Byung-gun
The author is the international, diplomatic and security news director of the JoongAng Ilbo.

It has been about four years since North Korea fired something new on the morning of May 4, 2019. The Joint Chiefs of Staff immediately announced that the North fired “an unspecified short-range missile,” but 40 minutes later changed the announcement to “an unspecified short-range projectile.” That prompted a controversy.

North Korea’s firing of a ballistic missile is in violation of the United Nations Security Council resolution. Therefore, if it is vaguely defined as a projectile, drawing the conclusion that North Korea violated the resolution can be delayed. The Blue House under then-President Moon Jae-in reportedly pressured the Joint Chiefs of Staff to revise the announcement.

The North fired the “unspecified projectile” three months after its summit with the United States in Hanoi fell apart. It is impossible to develop a new tactical guided weapon — the official term used by the North at the time — in three months. Unless the North had been secretly developing the weapon while the Korean Peninsula was in a rosy mood with an inter-Korean summit and a North-U.S. summit, Pyongyang could not have launched it. Experts at home and abroad said the projectile was a modified version of Russia’s Iskander ballistic missile. But the Democratic Party, which was the president’s party at the time, claimed that there was a high possibility that it was not a missile. It even said the issue was not serious and that the South must continue offering humanitarian food aid to the North.

Five days later, North Korea fired another unspecified projectile. There was no doubt that it showed the trajectory of a missile. Only then the government announced that it was presumed to be a short-range missile. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. military labeled this missile “KN-23,” a new type of ballistic missile.

The North fired another missile on July 25 of that year, less than a month after the bilateral meeting between then-U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at Panmunjom. A one-on-one meeting with the U.S. president is a big diplomatic event for any country. In that event, Trump had crossed the military demarcation line, although it was a brief moment, and stepped inside North Korea, fueling anticipations that U.S.-North relations would improve. But for North Korea, a meeting is a meeting, and a missile is a missile. Even after Kim met with the U.S. president, the North continued testing missiles and improving their performances.

Two years later, in September 2021, North Korea fired a KN-23 again. It made public the photos of the launch, and, for the first time, the missile was fired from a train. Questions arose over whether the North’s aged railway system could really support the weight of the missile and the impact of the launch. And yet, it was clear that the unspecified projectile was evolving into a train-launched missile.

One month later, North Korea touched the weak spot of South Korea and the U.S. On Oct. 19 of that year, the North fired a ballistic missile from a submarine in the waters of Sinpo, boasting of the missile’s mid-flight maneuverability. It means the missile can shoot up at the terminal stage to avoid detection and interception.

In September 2022, after a new administration was launched in the South, the North fired this missile in an extraordinary way. It launched a mini SLBM from a reservoir in Taechon, North Pyongan. The North Korean military’s imagination goes beyond common sense.

Last month, North Korea said a nuclear warhead can be placed on a KN-23. It revealed the so-called Hwasan-31 warhead and showed various missiles tipped with the warhead. It could be the North’s propaganda, but the U.S. has evaluations on the capabilities of KN-23 similar to that of the North. The U.S. Congressional Research Service said in its report in January this year that KN-23 missiles can strike all targets in the Korean Peninsula, are capable of carrying nuclear and conventional warheads, and show pull-up maneuvers to avoid interception. It means the missiles are tactical nuclear weapons against the South.

When the KN-23 made its first appearance four years ago, the South Korean government and military did not want to even call it a missile. In fact, President Moon’s Democratic Party proposed to give rice to North Korea. When the North made the bold move of firing the missile over the skies of Pyongyang to show off its stability in August 2019, the Moon administration wanted to end the General Security of Military Information Agreement with Japan.

Meanwhile, North Korea kept firing missiles whether or not Kim met Trump, whether the South called the missiles projectiles or not and whether the South Korean president was changed or not. The North fired missiles from land, train, submarine and reservoir. Eventually, the projectile has become a dreadful weapon capable of carrying nuclear warheads against the South. That’s the four-year trajectory of the “unspecified projectile.”