North Korea made an abrupt advance in its nuclear weapons program with the help of Soviet-era missile technology, according to a leading arms control analyst.
“[T]he former Soviet Union [is] the most likely source,” Michael Elleman, senior fellow for missile defense at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, wrote in a new report.
Elleman based that assessment on photos of the new North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles, which appear to be a direct match for one particular Soviet missile engine known as the RD-250. The engine was manufactured by a company in Ukraine that “has been near financial collapse” due to the ongoing crisis between Ukraine and Russia, but there are also “almost certainly hundreds, if not more,” of the engines scattered throughout the former Soviet Union.
“Clearly, there is no shortage of potential routes through which North Korea might have acquired the few dozen RD-250 engines that would be needed for an ICBM program,” Elleman wrote.
He said that explains how North Korea transitioned from a spate of high-profile missile failures in recent years to a demonstration of the ability, for the first time, to launch missiles that could strike the United States.
Unity has been hard to come by in the international arena, as Russia and China agree that the regime’s program is a threat but want the situation defused in a way that benefits their strategic interests. Both countries supported a new raft of economic sanctions imposed on the regime, but they argue simultaneously for the United States to stop conducting military exercises with South Korea and withdraw a missile defense system recently deployed to the region.
“All must understand that progress towards denuclearization of the Korean peninsula will be difficult so long as [the North Korean regime] perceives a direct threat to its own security,” Ambassador Vasily Nebenzia said at the U.N. last week. “For that is how the North Koreans view the military build up in the region, which takes on the forms of frequent, wide-ranging exercises and maneuvers of the U.S. and allies as they deploy strategic bombers, naval forces, and aircraft carriers.”
China and Russia both have provided economic lifelines to the regime, however, and the Treasury Department recently sanctioned a Russian company for “provid[ing] equipment” to the North Korea’s missile program.
Elleman told the New York Times that he suspects the engines were purchased from the factory in Ukraine, rather than from one of the depots in Russia, but U.S. officials who work to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons technology must grapple with the question of how they transferred the technology into the country and how to prevent future transfers.
“It is not too late for the U.S. and its allies, along with China and perhaps Russia, to negotiate an agreement that bans future missile testing, and effectively prevents North Korea from perfecting its capacity to terrorize America with nuclear weapons,” Elleman wrote in Monday’s analysis. “But the window of opportunity will soon close, so diplomatic action must be taken immediately.”
