North Korea Tests Strategic Cruise Missile With Dispersal Warhead, KCNA Says

North Korea said on Tuesday, November 3, that it had tested a strategic cruise missile mounted with a dispersal warhead a day earlier, on Monday, November 2. The state news agency KCNA reported the test, which it said assessed both the warhead's destructive power and the missile's flight characteristics for a vertical strike, according to Reuters and Yonhap reporting carried by Korea JoongAng Daily.

The claims, and who is making them

KCNA said the Warhead Institute of the Missile Administration confirmed that the midsized dispersal warhead tipped on the cruise missile is capable of turning a target area of 5 to 6 hectares into ashes with its highest density power. That area equals about 12.4 to 14.8 acres. The claim is a KCNA claim. No outside body has verified it, and the report carried no independent evidence of what the warhead did.

KCNA also said the Cruise Missile System Institute perfected the missile's vertical strike capability by improving its terminal maneuverability and adjusting it to the targeted area's natural and geographical characteristics. In plain terms, Pyongyang says the missile can now be guided onto a target from above more reliably. That too is a state media claim, stated here as KCNA reported it, not as a confirmed fact.

Who oversaw the test

Full Gen. Kim Jong-sik oversaw Monday's tests, according to KCNA. Kim is a member of the Workers' Party Central Military Commission and first vice department director of the party's Central Committee. KCNA did not say that leader Kim Jong Un attended.

South Korea's military did not announce the cruise missile launch. That silence is not unusual for this class of weapon: unlike ballistic missile launches, North Korean cruise missile tests are not prohibited by UN Security Council sanctions, a point noted in AFP reporting on the test.

Days after the cluster bomb test

The cruise missile test came days after a separate North Korean test on Saturday, October 31, of a cluster bomb warhead for tactical ballistic missiles. The Orbit Post published that October 31 test earlier. The two tests involve different weapons: a tactical ballistic missile warhead tested on Saturday, and a strategic cruise missile warhead tested on Monday. Read together, they show Pyongyang working on dispersal warheads for both kinds of missile in the same week.

What readers should hold onto is the sourcing. Reuters reported the KCNA announcement on Tuesday, and Yonhap reporting carried by Korea JoongAng Daily carried the same KCNA account. Both reports rest on what North Korean state media chose to publish. The performance figures, the vertical strike claim and the description of the institutes' work all come from that single state source, and none of it could be independently checked from outside the country.