When the Soviet Union shocked the world by launching Sputnik in 1957 the reaction of national security and U.S. congressional officials as a whole came down to “how did they get there this fast?” In the intervening six decades, the phenomenon of a technological surprise followed by that phrase has unfolded more often than the U.S. intelligence community would like. But, in the case of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and its missile program, there are those who saw the current threat to the U.S. and others coming some time ago.
As far back as the first term of then-President Barack Obama, U.S. reticence to take action to prevent both the DPRK and Pakistan from acquiring a full-fledged ballistic missile program (and the nuclear weapons to go with it) was looked upon by the Israeli national security community as dangerously naïve—a tack they vowed not copy in their own dealings with Iran. Ariel Levite, a nonresident senior associate in the nonproliferation program at the Carnegie Endowment, characterized the U.S. approach as “too early, too early—oops—too late,” in a 2012 interview with The New Yorker.
Unfortunately, when U.S. President Donald Trump assumed office almost 13 months ago this modus operandi had not changed much. The collective assessment of the American intelligence services was that the DPRK was four years or more away from having a nuclear-tipped missile that could hit the continental U.S., so there was no imminent threat.
Failed Assurances
These estimates were partially based on a classified program put in place by U.S. intelligence. Components illegally acquired by Pyongyang were deliberately sabotaged. These faulty piece parts or the spoofed software needed to integrate them guaranteed failed launches for any missile constructed with them. Seven of the eight 2016 test firings of DPRK designs for intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBM) subsequently either exploded on the launch pad or broke apart after launch.
These failures assured a number of observers that Kim Jong-un was now stymied. His designers would have difficulty fielding an operational ballistic missile with intercontinental range, or ICBM, in the near future, was the thinking at the time.
However, in May and July 2017, the DPRK tested a new ICBM design, apparently developed in parallel with the other missile programs that had previously suffered these failed test launches. Specialists familiar with the technology of these missiles, designated the Hwasong 12 and the Hwasong 14, believe the new rocket motor to be a variant of the Russian-designed Glushko RD-250. This rocket motor was developed in the Soviet era and was built by both PivdenMash in Ukraine and EnergoMash in Russia.
Sources of Supply
In August 2017 a report from the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) suggested that this rocket motor design had come from Ukraine. The author, Michael Elleman, is an experienced weapons inspector who served with the U.S. Cooperation Threat Reduction program in the former USSR and with the UN’s WMD on-site assessment teams in Iraq.
“It’s likely that these engines came from Ukraine—probably illicitly,” he said in an interview shortly thereafter. “The big question is how many they have and whether the Ukrainians are helping them now. I’m very worried.”
There are still conflicting accounts as to how the DPRK acquired this engine design. For its part, Ukraine’s Pivdenmash issued a rebuttal to suggestions that modified rocket motor designs seen in these DPRK missiles came from their design bureau or one of its associated program partners and offered a number of technical details to boost its argument. Other assessments are that the design concept might have its roots in Russia.
The secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council (RNBO), Oleksandr Turchynov, denied any Ukrainian role in assisting the DPRK and stated, “This information is not based on any grounds, [is] provocative by its content, and most likely provoked by the Russian secret services to cover their own crimes.” Ukrainian government policy, he said, views North Korea as “totalitarian, dangerous, and unpredictable, and supports all sanctions against this country.”
But Ukraine’s status as one of the Soviet-era centers of excellence for building ICBMs has attracted the DPRK’s shadowy network of procurement agents who are constantly acquiring ballistic missile technology in violation of UN and other sanctions.
In 2011, two DPRK agents assigned to their country’s trade mission in Belarus were arrested by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU). The two North Koreans had offered payments to an employee of PivdenMash and asked him for information on “ballistic missiles, missile systems, missile construction, spacecraft engines, solar batteries, fast-emptying fuel tanks, mobile launch containers, powder accumulators, and military government standards.”
Failing Regimes
These agents were caught before any data could be transferred to the DPRK, but the bulk of evidence to date suggests that illicit acquisitions of missile technology by Pyongyang take place almost every day.
A 118-page report by the United Nations dated Feb. 27, 2017 concludes that the DPRK has been “flouting sanctions through trade in prohibited goods, with evasion techniques that are increasing in scale, scope, and sophistication…new interdictions, one of which highlighted the country’s ability to manufacture and trade in sophisticated and lucrative military technologies using overseas networks.”
The report also provided details about how “designated entities and banks have continued to operate in the sanctioned environment by using agents who are highly experienced and well trained in moving money, people, and goods, including arms and related material, across borders. These agents use non-nationals of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as facilitators and rely on numerous front companies. Diplomats, missions, and trade representatives of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea systematically play key roles in prohibited sales, procurement, finance, and logistics. In particular, designated entities are trading in banned minerals, showing the interconnection between trade of different types of prohibited materials.”
The sanctions regime, said a former U.S. intelligence officer, “is clearly failing. The North is getting much of what it needs to keep advancing the state of its programs. It is just a question of time before Kim [Jong-un] has the ability to use that ‘nuclear button’ on his desk that he has already bragged about.” In November 2017, the DPRK tested a third missile of this new design configuration, the Hwasong-15, which is rated as being able to hit anywhere in the continental U.S.
But the Kim regime itself may be failing, as there are signs it is also running out of time. Japanese news services report increasing numbers of North Korean “ghost ships” washing ashore in Japan that are either empty or full of dead bodies. The two interpretations are that increasing numbers of people are trying to escape the country, which means the security apparatus that is supposed to stop them from fleeing is crumbling, or that the ships are forced to venture farther away from shore to meet fishing quotas, which means the DPRK’s economic state is worsening.
Speaking off the record to Radio Free Asia, Chinese sources have stated that “due to Kim Jong Un’s extravagant spending, the slush fund from his father, Kim Jong-il, is running out. We can speculate that he spent a lot of money from the number of missile [and nuclear weapons] tests he carried out. Most of the funding for nuclear weapon and missile development is coming from Kim Jong-un’s slush fund.”
The same source said Kim had also spent heavily on high-profile, showcase projects to try and present the DPRK as a modernizing, developing nation. These include a brand-new airport terminal and the Ryomyong Street development in Pyongyang, and the Masikryong Ski Resort.
This cash crunch, which could cripple these missile programs, is part of what has prompted the DPRK to send its athletes to the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Pyongyang, say some of the same Chinese sources, is betting that extending its hand in a gesture of friendship will result in a flood of investment and assistance from its South Korean “brothers” that can make up this shortfall.
