North Korea announced it tested two types of submarine-launched cruise missiles off its east coast this week.
A day earlier, state news agency KCNA reported that leader Kim Jong Un visited a new museum with military items, including an intercontinental ballistic missile said to be capable of hitting targets in United States territories.
The visit took place five days after the president of South Korea, Lee Jae-myung, attended the test launch of the first hypersonic missile developed entirely by the country.
Both North and South Korea are in a race to develop hypersonic technology because it represents a leap in offensive capabilities at a time of heightened tensions in the Indo-Pacific region.
Hypersonic missiles are weapons capable of traveling at least five times the speed of sound (Mach 5), or more than 6,100 kilometers per hour.
This speed makes it much more difficult for defense forces to identify, track and destroy incoming missiles, which may carry conventional or nuclear warheads.
Another advantage over previous generations of missiles is the ability to suddenly change trajectory, dive or zigzag during flight, making interception significantly more difficult.
"There has been an arms race on the Korean peninsula for many years, and hypersonic weapons are just the latest manifestation of that," said Chris Green, senior advisor for the Korean peninsula at the International Crisis Group.
Hypersonic weapons have become a "priority for the South" as the North has expanded its capabilities and strengthened military and economic ties with Russia, Green added.
"And North Korea has nuclear weapons, but it would not be feasible to use them, because the threat has always been that in doing so, the US would turn the country to glass. For the North, it is not surprising that the geopolitics of the region have encouraged them to pursue advanced conventional weapons in an attempt to achieve predominance on the peninsula," he says.
Underestimating North Korea?
While it is impossible to confirm with certainty that the weapons North Korea claims to have developed possess the capabilities claimed by the government, Green said it would be a mistake to underestimate Pyongyang.
"We don't know their capabilities and it's possible this is all propaganda, but there is a long list of occasions where the North's capabilities have been underestimated only to discover later that they actually can do what they say they can do," Green said.
Chun In-bum, a retired South Korean Army general and now a senior researcher at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies, shares this assessment.
"No one knows for sure whether they are telling the truth about this, but any prudent military planner should always assume the worst-case scenario," says the general.
Mastery of the technology needed to operate hypersonic missiles appears to have come suddenly to North Korea, although it remains unclear how the country acquired this capability.
"They probably obtained the technology through illegal means," Chun said.
"They spy on companies in the US, South Korea and Japan in search of this type of information, but they also do this with their 'friends'."
Regardless of the source of the data, the fact that North Korean hypersonic missiles apparently performed as expected should be cause for great concern.
"Greater offensive capabilities increase the overall danger posed by the North, and if they have weapons that are harder to shoot down, there may be a greater temptation to use them. I'm speculating, of course," Chun added, "but I'm sure we're looking for ways to neutralize that particular threat. From what I understand, though, there's no good answer at this point."
Doesn't change the game
Green said viable systems developed by both sides could end up canceling each other out as a significant advantage on the battlefield. "I don't think it changes the balance of power," he said.
"The North continues with its nuclear deterrence and this 'porcupine strategy' of being sharp and prickly to keep others at bay," he added. "However, it is clear that if the North continues to develop its offensive systems and is able to deploy them on a large scale it will be necessary to discuss an expansion of missile defenses, not only in the South, but also in Japan. And this will raise some very difficult questions", concludes Green.
