North Korea News Podcast by NK News - North Korea’s upgraded hypersonic missile, and the year-end party plenum

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

North Korea launched into the new year with its first test of a ballistic missile in months, firing an upgraded version of its solid-fuel hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile on Monday.  NK News Lead Correspondent Shreyas Reddy joins the podcast to discuss what new about the missile and the timing of the launch. He also reviews […]

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It was the first in two months and the first for the year. Yeah, I think North Korea has been relatively silent for a while and perhaps some would say maybe suspiciously silent while South Korea itself was going through a lot, but now it seems to be back and it seems to be trying to get back on its defense development goals. In this case, what they have told us so far is that the test launched an upgraded version of a solid fuel hypersonic intermediate range ballistic missile. Okay, this is North Korea itself saying this.

Yes. So they just today they went and announced it in state media. So Kim Jong-un oversaw the test as usual. Does it have a name this particular missile? They haven't yet provided a name, but they did say that this it features new flight and guidance control systems and a new engine casing made using advanced carbon fiber composite materials. Oh, wow. So they're getting into the new materials. And this is, you said, solid fuel? So it's the one that you can move around and don't need time to really refuel it before

you launch it. And it's a ballistic missile, right? Which is like, goes up like an inverted U shape and then comes down, it's hypersonic, so it comes down really, really fast onto its target. And it's basically, it's meant to be a maneuverable warhead, making it much harder to intercept, so it's designed to defeat missile defense systems.

That's the key point here, okay. It's designed to defeat missile defense systems, whether they be in South Korea or in the United States or wherever. What was the range of this missile? Do we know? So we can't be 100% certain but as an intermediate range ballistic missile quite often the range would be, it wouldn't be enough to for example reach the continental United States but Guam

certainly would be an option. So I think it does possess a significant threat. The full capabilities we'll probably have to see with more tests, but from what North Korea certainly made it out to be, it is meant to present a threat to adversaries in the Pacific. Now, this was yesterday. Do we have a time on this? Happened sometime in the morning. So essentially, according to the South Korean military, the launch happened around noon and then splashdown not long after, so around pretty much about 10, 11 minutes later.

Splashdown, somewhere in the sea between North Korea and Japan, is that right? Yes. Okay, this is commonplace. Japan. This launch happened to coincide of course with the visit of the president of the Dutch Parliament. That's clearly a relationship between those two events. The president here is the equivalent of the speaker. Or perhaps it coincided with the visit of somebody else. Yes, well I suspect you're referring to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken who is here making

his final visit to South Korea in his current tenure before he steps down. In fact, his final tour outside the US overall. Of any way. Okay, now, you know, it's one of those themes that we return to over the years is, does North Korea do these things to provoke or does it do them simply for its own testing purpose? It's hard to get away from the feeling that here in this case the very day that Antony Blinken is meeting with the acting president Choe Sang-mok here in South Korea that North

Korea launched it's hard to to not see a link there. Definitely. I mean like you said it is there are times when we passionately say you know North Korea does not define its schedules based solely on other countries, but it certainly is a factor. And in this case, this sort of event certainly does send a message, particularly coming just a week after their end of year plenum in which they made clear that as far as they're concerned, they have to step up their anti-US activities and the fact that this happened the very first time since then a US official was visiting

South Korea. Right and the first missile test in two months. We haven't had one since what just before the the US presidential elections. Yeah. So before we get on back I want to go back to the planet but before we do let's just get a little bit forensic on this. Was Anthony Blinken's visit to Korea announced ahead of time? It was announced a couple of days ahead. So essentially they clubbed it with Japan and France, part of a three-country tour. And obviously in this case, perhaps South Korea and Japan would have been part of the tour anyway, in their important allies for the U.S. of the two are anyway in their important allies for the US. But in fact, they were in the first countries he visited when he took over as Secretary of State. But given the current situation in South

Korea, it's hard to also get away from the fact that there's a reason South Korea had to be prioritized. Given the political instability here right now. Now, would it take North Korea long to, critical instability here right now. Now, would it take North Korea long to, you know, once you've got this missile made, would it take it long to schedule a test launch? Or was this something, you know, was it something that they had scheduled a month in advance and it simply happens to coincide with Blinken's visit?

Well, I think any missile launch, most missiles like this ballistic missiles, you would at least have to plan it a little bit, schedule it, but at the same time not that long and fundamentally a few days notice from Blinken at least gives you a sense of when they might be around. Now we didn't know for certain when he would land in South Korea until but he did land in the early hours of Monday and yeah yeah, less than half a day later, we had to miss that launch.

Because this thing is a solid fuel rocket, and there's no, where there's less pre-launch preparation time necessary, so it's possible that they just timed it. Quite possible. I mean, I expect it may have been a combination of the two. I think they would have needed to do a little bit of prep work, especially if it's a new, they would have certainly wanted to get it right. But at the same time,

if it happened to align with a politically motivated event, then perfect time to just, you know, fiddle things a little bit. Right, because they could have perhaps kept it in until January the 20th for Trump's inauguration and done it around that time, too If they'd wanted to but who knows I mean gosh We've still got a couple of weeks there may yet be a launch in time for that certainly see all let's go back to the Plenum so the last time there was a plenum end of year plenum at the end of 2023 going into 2024 Kim Jong-un of course said he was no longer interested in peaceful unification with South Korea that he saw it as a Separate country an enemy state and there are now two Koreas basically, a two-Korea policy. What was announced at the plenum at the end of 2024?

Well, compared to last year's incredibly drastic shifts, this year was almost tame in comparison. Much of it was focused on, oh, we're going to continue with our economic growth. Look how well we're doing. We're going to continue with ideological education. But there were a few things here and there. So for example, on the foreign policy front, he pretty much called for the most hardline anti-US policy from North Korea, essentially saying we're going to boost our activities against the US, which right before Donald Trump's inauguration certainly sends a message that even if the two leaders have had their personal friendship in the past, it does not mean North Korea is willing to talk to the US

at this stage. What kind of anti-US activities would we be talking about, apart from making more missiles, making more bombs? I mean, what else is there? I mean, that's the thing. He didn't really specify anything. So in some ways, it is perhaps, it could just be empty rhetoric. But at the end of the day, it's more just about sending a message.

In all likelihood, it might just be more of the same, as you said, might just be making more weapons, more missiles, maybe increasing rhetoric. But for now, I think we'll have to wait and watch. A lot of it could just be, again, continuing what they're already doing, forming stronger alliances with countries like Russia as part of an alternate world order challenge in the US. Did he mention Russia? He did not mention Russia, did not mention China, did not mention, well, did mention

South Korea, but only as an extension of the US in essence. Did he mention the war? No. Don't mention the war. No, he is pretty much... Faulty Chow's reference there. Well, he pretty much steered clear of most foreign policy topics, to be honest. So it was fairly muted.

I think there were obviously a few things that suggested continuity more than anything drastic. I think which is perhaps in another year calling for that most hardline anti-US policy wouldn't have stood out as much. But because there was nothing else, it stood out all the more. How long was his speech? I've not watched it or read it. Well, to be honest, we can't be entirely certain because all we got was what came out in state media afterwards. So the condensed report covering the entire five-day plenum. It was a slightly unusual plenum in other ways as well. Concluded on December 27th, which the previous few plenums have all ended on either 30th or 31st December.

They go right up to the end of the year. So this one kind of ended quickly. Yeah, so it kind of raised hopes a little bit as well that or these expectations that maybe Kim Jong-un might announce something a little more concrete to give us a clearer sense of his priorities around New Year's maybe a revival his New Year's speech or something at the New Year concert. Right, which he hasn't done the New Year's speech for a while. Yeah. Well, as it turned out, nothing whatsoever. And no concert either? There was a concert, but he didn't really deliver a speech there.

Was he there? He was there. He attended. It was, again, a celebration in his honor. Lots of songs sung, including the new North Korean propaganda song launched last year that became a viral hit so that was sung in his honor. Good Papa? What was it? Something like that? Friendly Father? Was this an outdoor concert again at the Kim Il Sung Square? This was at the May Day Stadium. Ah the May Day Stadium, okay. Ideological education, did it go into detail on that? That's always one that's interesting to me. I think there was some extent but I think like most things in the report there wasn't really as much in terms of what they'd really go ahead with. So he talked

about calling for more political and ideological work to create an absolute unchanging view of the main enemy and essentially strengthen preparedness, trying to build up a lot of other elements. I think it's partly also about strengthening internal discipline within the ruling party and administrative organs, something which Kim Jong-un has been stressing for a while. So I think it is something that perhaps we'd like to explore a little more in the coming days as we try and find out more about Kim Jong-un's plans

for the coming year. But at the moment, I think a lot of what we saw coming out of that plenum didn't really tell us enough, which even by the standards of North Korea, where they don't always spell everything out, I think compared to previous plenums, this one said particularly little. All hat and no cattle, is that the right phrase? Anyway, a lot of talk, but no substance. Yeah.

Interesting. All right, we have time for one more theme or one more story. What else would you? You've really got the pick of the bunch. There's so much going on in the last couple of weeks. Well, I guess there's so much going on at the moment and I think maybe perhaps a little closer to us here in South Korea at the moment, there's still a lot of instability, lots of accusations flying every which way, including claims about

essentially, I think we've already covered claims of false flag operations and stories about attempts to induce North Korean attacks. But building off those, the South Korea's main opposition party has also brought up more claims about that in the past week or so talking about... So they said, so you might remember in October, suppose an alleged South Korean military drone was found in Pyongyang. Yes, flying over Pyongyang, photographed by the North Koreans. I don't think it was downed, but certainly what did come... Oh, it did.

So they said they pretty much took photographs of it stuck in a tree and then after having taken it out now. You're right. I sit corrected. And there were leaflets. Yeah. And so to be honest, at the time, I think there was a lot of debate like, could it actually be a South Korean military drone?

Could it be some sort of NGO? Or could North Korea have faked it too, just to create an incentive. Now the way things are going, it certainly does lend a lot of credibility to the claim that South Korea did send it. And so South Korea's... More specifically, or at least the way that I've read it, is that President Yun Sang-yeol kind of bypassed the military and went straight to, I forget which agency.

The drone operations command. So that was essentially what the main opposition democratic party alleged last week. They said Yun Sang-yeol's presidential office bypassed the military chain of command. They supposedly informed the head of the Joint Chiefs Staff and Defense Counterintelligence Command just to make sure that the drones didn't get intercepted en route to North Korea. But basically, according to the Democratic Party, National Security Office under UNE planned out the whole operation and orchestrated it and essentially in a bid to raise inter-Korean tensions and set up a pretext for the martial law declaration.

Did you say that they informed combined forces command? No, so joint chiefs of staff and defense counterintelligence command, but only the chiefs, not the rest of the military. So then it sounds like then that the combined forces command, specifically the US military, which is an alliance partnership with South Korea, was left out of the loop on this. So it seems, if the claims are to be believed. Now, admittedly, it should be stressed. There is no actual evidence of this yet. And the presidential office promptly came out and denied the whole thing. Oh, I see, that's next to it.

Okay. And there has been a lot of denials about lots of things. So let's see. Let's wait and see. And the South Korean military also came out a couple of days later and denied that it sought to induce conflict with North Korea, essentially saying our job is not to incite conflict, our job is to prevent it. And they all said we had so many opportunities to incite conflict with North Korea if we wanted after they started blowing up roads and railroads on their side of the border,

for example. Why didn't we do it then? When we fired warning shots, we fired them southward not at the north so I think but press coming back to that to that drone yeah the South Korean military has a kind of a slippery position on this right like they've never said we did or we didn't send that drone to Pyongyang and they still haven't have they yeah it's been it's they they're still continuing to just stay mum about that. And it is a little dubious that even after all this time, even with all these allegations, they haven't yet, they've denied other things.

Not that. And I recently met a retired ROC military officer who also wouldn't go on the, and we were speaking off the record at an informal event and he wouldn't say one way or the other where that drone was coming from. So I think we haven't heard the last of that story. Unfortunately, we have heard the last of this episode of the podcast because we've already gone up to 17 minutes. So Shreyas, thanks very much for coming on and we'll see you again very soon in a few weeks. Thanks a lot for having me. See you. Welcome to a new realm of insights into the Korean Peninsula. At Korea Risk Group, we delve deep into the complexities of North and South Korea, offering

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