North Korea News Podcast by NK News - North Korea’s engine test, Kim Jong Un’s Beijing diplomacy and trade fair plans

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

This week, NK News Senior Analytic Correspondent Colin Zwirko joins the podcast to discuss North Korea’s “static firing test of a high-thrust solid-fuel motor” used in long-range nuclear missiles, a week after Kim Jong Un inspected a new ballistic missile design. The conversation then turns to Kim’s high-profile trip to Beijing, his first in six […]

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I am your host, Jacko's Wetsuit, and today it is the 9th of September, or Google Jol, if you're from North Korea, and I'm here in the studio, the NK News studio with Colin Zeriko. Colin, welcome back on the show. Good morning, Jacko. Happy Google Jol to you? Yes, it's funny when you say it that way. It's kind of ironic. Look, for those listeners who, for those few listeners who are not aware, the ninth of

September, 1948 is the Foundation Day of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. So they have a special holiday out there in North Korea. They call it Gugujol 9-9. Do we expect anything? I mean, it's not really a big day on the counter. No big parades, right? It's a 77th anniversary, right? So being not a five-year- or 10-year-round-number anniversary,

we're not expecting major huge events, but probably they'll have, you know, the youth and the youth mass-distance. dance or something and a fireworks like is very typical, not a big deal. But last year, Kim Jong-un made a special speech at the party headquarters building. So I think given that, given everything that's going on these days in terms of the diplomatic whirlwind, you know, Kim and Zhang meeting Putin and Xi Jinping, and then all this talk about, is there a potential Trump meeting in the works, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's a potential, I guess, that he could talk about foreign relations. Yeah. Yeah. So that could be a speech or perhaps even, I mean,

more prosaic, especially editorial and the Rordong Shinuan, something like that. But there'll be some way of marking today. For sure. Some kind of concerts, some celebrations. Yeah. Now, of course, as you've already hinted at, last week we talked quite a bit about the meeting in Beijing. But do we have any updates, any follow-ups

on Kim Jong-un's big trip to China? First one in six years. Now he's back in North Korea. What's the fallout? Maybe the wrong word, but what are the after effects of that, the long tale of that? Yeah, so he returned on Friday, so it was September 2nd to the 5th was when he was gone from North Korea. He, yeah, I mean, so at the end of it, we see that he met Kim, he met Putin and Xi Jinping separately

for bilateral meetings. Right, but no trilateral, which in itself is kind of significant, given that all this talk about, ooh, is there an axis, but there's no trilateral meeting. Right, no trilateral meeting. He did get his tacit approval for his nuclear weapons program, so it's quite, dead as an idea that China and Russia are going to do anything like they did back in 2017 in terms of helping the United States and Europe try to reign in North Korea's nuclear program. So now, even the U.S. might even be backing away from that. So so it was a successful

trip for Kim. He got a lot of FaceTime. He got a lot of, he got this stature boost on the world stage, both in terms of how we perceive it, how he was out in front of all the other, you know, 30 plus foreign leaders and dignitaries up there at the front with Xi and Putin. And also to the domestic audience, they got the same images. So, yeah, successful, but simple trip overall.

There were no new initiatives announced. You know, Xi Jinping meeting all these world leaders talking about this and that economic initiative, very specific stuff, but absolutely nothing in terms of specifics announced. Now there was this sort of funny sort of post-script story from South Korea about this Minja Democratic Party lawmaker Pak Ji Wan who had been the head of the National Intelligence Service under President Moon Jae-in and he was there in North Korea for the parade

and I guess he was from the article here he was walking behind Kim Jong-un and sort of tried to call out his name for a bit of a hey there, nice to see you again but got ghosted but then he saw Chess on He and said hey long time no see but he was also again. ignored. And then he refers to the fact that the National Assembly Speaker, Uwuan Shik, got a handshake with Kim Jong-un, and so basically concluded that this was a successful encounter. Yeah, he said that eye contact meant it was successful.

I forgot that. I forgot to mention eye contact with the Foreign Minister of North Korea Chess on here that, oh, it's successful, but that's a bit sad, isn't it? Yeah, well, South Korea is the new administration of the Liberal Party, the new president, I.J. Myeong. He came in replacing the very conservative, hawkish, you know, provocateur, previous president. And he's come in trying to improve relations with North Korea after the previous guy tried to literally start a war with North Korea. Or at least a small-scale conflict. Yeah, well, you never know how it's going to go. Yeah, no. Very reckless.

So they are choosing to ignore all of the very vitriolic, the insults that are coming out of North Korea, Kim Jong-un's sister. who's basically Kim Jong-un's spokesperson is releasing all these statements recently, insulting the South Korean people as a whole, calling them dogs, you know, real nasty stuff. Nasty, yeah. And the liberal South Korean party officials are choosing to take the high road, so to speak, and ignore this and just say, oh, whatever, and they're trying to engage with North Korea. And so at this event in Beijing, they were trying very hard, waving their hands, calling out the North Koreans, say, please, please, talk with us.

We want to be friends. getting blocked by the bodyguards. We want to get back together and the North Koreans are sticking to their plan which is to ignore them and just not engage. So that's it.

Feels a bit like unrequited high school love. Yes, Kim Jong Unrequited. There you go. It's a nice. Kim Jong unrequited. Good film title, I suppose. Now, the North Koreans

have been busy this week with some missile inspections and an engine test. So tell us about that. Yeah, this was also sort of related to the trip Because just whenever Kim Jong-un's train left North Korea last week, they released these two reports on a day after, you know, two days in a row that Kim inspected short-range ballistic missile factory talking about a newly installed production line saying this really helps with the production of these nuclear-capable short-range missiles, which North Korea has also been exporting to Russia for use in its invasion of Ukraine. and then the next day they reported that Kim inspected a newly developed missile engine solid fuel engine made of lightweight carbon fiber for their Hwasang 19 ICBM, long range nuclear missile designed to strike the U.S., which they tested about a year ago, and also a newly announced Hwasang 20 ICBM, that was the first time they mentioned this missile in that report.

And so these came right ahead of his visit to China, which we interpreted as a signal to the world and to Xi Jinping and Putin that talks of denuclearization, any talks of stopping North Korea's nuclear missile production and development is not going to be a part of these meetings. And then it ended up not being a part of the meetings. And we got this tacit approval from both of them, obviously Russia, but also China, importantly. So, and now today, on Tuesday, we got a report in state media that they tested this engine that they talked about last week. So they called it the ninth and final test of this engine, even though the previous, solid, yeah, even though the first stage of this ICBM, this new ICBM, even though the first eight tests were not publicized, they're claiming that they did them over the last two years.

And calling it the ninth and final test to me suggests that they're. getting ready for a test launch. It does sound like. So I think we should watch out for an ICBM test soon. There's no telling when, but we have reported on these efforts to build up a large new missile test facility. It looks like launch pads right near where they've tested all their other ICBMs in the last few years. And being the end of the five-year missile development plan of Kim Jong-un at the end of this year, also looking to test a multiple warhead missile again, and we got to see this sea-based, quote-unquote, sea-based

ICBM at some point. When they do an ICBM test launch, where do these things end up flying? Do they do like a figure-eight patent and then come down to the sea, or do they go over Japan and fall down somewhere in the Pacific? What do they normally do? So far, all of North Korea's ICBM tests, which, gosh, now I'm forgetting the number, but it's got to be over seven or maybe 10. I don't know.

They've done a lot of these, like seven in the last few years, at least. they have all been lofted launches, which means they intentionally fire them almost vertically so that they drop in the East Sea, Sea of Japan. Don't want to get any angry letters here, and not over Japan. Okay, so it's like an upside down, well, like an upside down V. So it goes up really high and then it comes down really sharply. Yeah, yeah. They have talked about wanting to do a full-range test into the Pacific.

that would just require it to go, I guess, quote, over Japan, even though it's in space, it's not really over Japan. It's just like a satellite. But they could do that. We don't know. Okay. So that's... Now, how has the North Korean state media been reporting these things? Right. It's a big of a curious one, because both of the short-range ballistic missile factory

and the inspection of the development of this ICBM engine, those reports that came before the China trip, or write as he was leaving, those were not reported to domestic audiences. That's interesting. Those are only reported in internationally available KCNA, state media. But today, the missile engine test was reported in the Nodong Shimbun, the domestic-facing newspaper. Yep.

But even today, the report for the domestic readers was less detailed than the report today in KCNA for your international readers. So I think there's a bit of calculation going on. it doesn't seem too significant, but it seems like prior to his trip to China, they wanted to just keep the narrative simple for the domestic readers. Kim is going to China. It's going to be a great thing and not complicated with this, what seemed to us, kind of like a, not a, not taunting Xi and Putin,

but more like forcing his hand before the meetings about his commitment to his nuclear weapons program. But now that he's come back from the meetings, they can kind of say, they can kind of deliver this, which is consistent. anyway with all of his talk about his nuclear weapons program. And even today, it came second in order where the top of the front page was his inspection of a hospital project. So over time, we've seen this kind of shifting. Some days they want to imply that Kim is more focused on the people. Yep. And then they'll put the missile thing under it, something like that. It's very nuanced, but... Right. Oh, that is interesting messaging. Yeah. Now, also, speaking of interesting

messaging. The late next month, October 27th or 31st, there will be the autumn iteration of the twice-yearly Pyongyang International Trade Fair. We had one in spring this year, and I know that some of the tour firms like Young Pioneer tours were hoping to bring in some visitors to look at that international trade fair. Ultimately, they weren't allowed to go. And the same thing's going to happen again next month for the autumn show. Is that overlapping precisely with the APEC? Yeah, yeah, exactly. The very, very tail end of October, that is when the APEC... The both Koreas show off their economic power. Right. We've got South Korea with APEC with world leaders coming.

Yes. And we've got North Korea with their scaled down international trade fair. That's right. Good point. I hadn't even thought of that. So the APEC heads of state or summit meeting will be down there in Kyeongju, the ancient Shiller capital. There's talk of Trump maybe going. I haven't seen if that's confirmed. Yes, we haven't seen whether that's confirmed. And wouldn't it be interesting if he sort of did one of those... those tweet things said, hey, Kim Jong-un, I'm going to be in the number.

That's never going to happen. No, well, that's not going to happen. Oh, Panmunjam. What if they did another, you know, a re-reshoot, a remake of Panmenjom 2019? I don't know. So we saw how successful that was. Well, that's right, exactly. But Young Pioneer tours, the tour company that had organized a business delegation to the spring

and this upcoming autumn trade fair, they've announced in the last day or so that all of those Western visitors have been disinvited, uninvited, and it'll just be Chinese and Russian delegations going to that trade fair. So it's not a very, very international trade fair, but there will be two foreign countries there. Yeah, you know, I think that North Korea is engaging economically through other avenues. I don't think this is the main way that North Korea finds its economic partners. This is something that gets a lot of attention because it's visible, but it's organized by whatever, what is this organization in North Korea? You know, they're pushing this on their own as their own venture.

So, yeah, it reminds me, you know, just one year ago, the Autumn Trade Fair last year in Pyongyang, we had that, we had foreigners, or Westerners, you know, we had these Italian brothers pushing their cigarette business with North Korea. That was fascinating. You can go check that story out. Yeah, that's one in the archives. The smokings, yeah.

But this year, you know, I'm sure it'll be fairly low-key. It's an exhibition, or it's a trade fair that's been going on for many years. Back before the pandemic, there were around 350 participants would have a booth there. So it was quite a sizable one, and it was originally planned that there'd be 450 exhibitors at this one. So it was going to be even bigger than the pre-pandemic editions. But now it will be down to, well, according to Young Pioneer Tools, manager Rowan Beard, former guest to this podcast, they're going down to about 100 curated Chinese businesses will be there. it'll be much less international than their previous trade fairs.

Yeah, I think this is just another indicator of this, you know, in, I don't want to call it infighting, but internal, the way that things work in North Korea, you've got like, again, this organization, which I'm sure is in the article, but I forget the name right now, they are pushing and promoting on their own terms, and then they get some pushback at some point from higher authorities in North Korea that say we're not doing it that way right now. we're not letting all these companies in right now. And then they have to backtrack.

That's right. Ultimately, security concerns take the priority in North Korea. Yeah, so, I mean, one of the great things for us as observers of North Korea from outside it was that often you'd get a lot of interesting photographs and bits of film footage taken to these international trade-first. So you get a sense of what kind of businesses are up and coming in North Korea, what kind of business are getting priority. But, yeah, with this clampdown or cut down,

I'm reminded of what Eric Balbach said on my podcast a few months ago that North Korea has said pretty clearly to Europe and to other countries, you guys have nothing that we need right now. And so for North Korea, I imagine they're not seeing it as a loss. Yeah, and I wouldn't take this as an overall or long-term message. I would say even though they didn't neither China or North Korea released very detailed readouts on the Kim Xi meeting, they did talk about economic cooperation, expanding these kinds of platitudes. So I think, you know, pre-pandemic during the height of the China, North Korea

cooperation when it was really accelerating, they had a bunch of China-specific trade fairs where a bunch of Chinese companies came in and did, you know, got a high-tech trade fair. This could happen soon. It might, maybe just a different organization than the one running the Auden Trade Fair. So we've got to keep a lookout for. the results of this Kim-she meeting in other ways. Much to keep an eye on. Thanks for walking us through it today, Collins-Wirke. We'll see you again soon.

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signup.compro.org and become a member today. Ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to the end of our podcast episode for today. Our thanks go to Brian Betts and Alana Hill for facilitating this episode, and to our post-recording producer genius Gabby Magnuson, who cuts out all the extraneous noises, awkward silences, bodily functions, and fixes the audio levels. Thank you and listen again next time. You know what I'm going to be.