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from The Washington Post....

How ‘isolated’ North Korea managed to build an ICBM that could reach Alaska

The country might seem isolated, but it imported expertise from Russia and has had relationships with Iran and Pakistan.

By AMANDA ERICKSON | 5:01AM EDT - Saturday, July 08, 2017


Pedestrians make their way past the portraits of late North Korean leaders Kim Il-sung, left, and Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang.
 — Photograph: Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse.

NORTH KOREA is a country in isolation, a place where most citizens don't have access to the Internet or the means to travel abroad. In 2010, The New York Times described the country as a “hermit kingdom, so poor that there is almost no supply of concrete, bricks or window glass. People suffer shortages of rice, gasoline and even underwear.”

And yet. It's been able to expand its weapons technology at an astounding rate. Earlier this week, it test launched an intercontinental ballistic missile that experts say could have reached Alaska. How has the North been able to make big weaponry advances that experts considered a couple of years away at best?

The answer: North Korea has been developing its nuclear weapon systems expertise for decades. It boasts a cadre of well-trained scientists and engineers and a vast, international financial network that's both supplied the necessary raw materials and funded a billion-dollar weapons development program. And it doesn't hurt that Kim Jung Un has made the nuclear weapons program a top priority, orienting his entire country toward that goal.

“When you have a strategic line, a single-minded focus on nuclear and economic development, and you're able to politically mobilize and entire state infrastructure to that end, it provides a lot of potential momentum,” says Scott A. Snyder, a North Korea expert and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “That's what Kim Jung Un has done.”

North Korea launched its missile development program in 1980. At first, their strategy was to buy up old Soviet missiles from third parties like Egypt and Syria, explains John Schilling, a North Korea expert an aerospace engineer who contributes to 38 North, a website devoted to events concerning North Korea. Once the North Korean engineers had the old missiles, they worked to reverse-engineer them so that they could produce their own copies.

The country imported experience too, Schilling says. As the Soviet Union neared collapse, North Korea hired Russian engineers who weren't being paid at home. They brought them to Pyongyang to both work directly on North Korean programs, and to train North Koreans.

North Korea also had relationships with Iran and Pakistan, Schilling says. “Initially, these seem to have been one-way affairs — North Korea sold Iran missiles to use in their war with Iraq, and Pakistan (or at least A.Q. Khan) sold nuclear technology to North Korea,” he wrote in an email. “But as all three nations developed their skills, this turned into more of an equal partnership with information and technology flowing between all three nations.” (Abdul Qadeer Khan is the founder of Pakistan's uranium-enrichment program and has been accused of aiding the proliferation of nuclear weapons in other countries.)

At first, these efforts led to some trial and a lot of error. Not so anymore. Today, the regime is “much more efficient and effective” at producing weapons in-house, says Ken Gause, a North Korea expert at the Center for Naval Analyses. “They're not making the same mistakes over and over again.”

Indeed, Schilling says that they're mostly able to build their rockets in-house. “They do still need to import some specialized parts and components, particularly electronics, but this is done mostly on a black- or grey-market basis,” he writes. And it's not hard. “It doesn't need to be done on a large scale, and it doesn't need anyone else's active collaboration, so it would be very difficult to stop,” he says.

The country's speedy weapons development in the past few years, Snyder says, can be attributed to Kim Jung Un.

Kim Jung Il, Un's father, initially developed the nuclear weapons program. But it wasn't an overriding priority, Snyder says, and it moved at a “plodding pace.” When Un assumed power, Snyder says he “stepped on the gas peddle,” making missile development his top priority. That's in part a political calculation — Un was young when he took over the country, and untested. The program was a source of domestic legitimization. It also helped Un counter the perception that North Korea is vulnerable internationally, a weak state surrounded by strong states.

Un sees an ability to strike with nuclear weapons as the key to his legitimacy. All of which makes slowing the program down at this point a nearly impossible aim. “If North Korea wants a nuclear program, North Korea is gonna get one,” Gause said. “And we're gonna have to live with it.”

Of course, there are still some hurdles the country needs to overcome.

Right now, their strongest warhead detonated at about 20 kilotons, similar to Nagasaki. Reaching the abilities of an American missile of warhead (which yield 100 — 475 kilotons) will require “fundamentally new designs,” Schilling says. That's still a couple of years away he predicts.

The country has also so far failed to show that it can fit a nuclear warhead into a missile. But that doesn't bring Schilling much comfort.

“Every nation with North Korea's level of demonstrated expertise in nuclear weapons development has at least been able to fit their low-yield nuclear warheads into missiles,” he writes. North Korea has published mock-ups of how they would do it, and Schilling calls them “plausible.” He also notes that very few countries have actually demonstrated that their missiles and warheads work together.

Even the United States and Russia have done it only a handful of times. “Mostly, nations test their missiles and warheads separately and trust that they will work when brought together,” he wrote. “If the North Koreans felt compelled to put one of their warheads on one of their missiles and fire it tomorrow, odds are it would work.”

• Amanda Erickson writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. Previously, she worked as an editor for Outlook and PostEverything.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/07/07/how-isolated-north-korea-managed-to-build-an-icbm-that-could-reach-alaska