Kim Jong Un’s Big Nuclear Push Is Closing In on America

Kim Jong Un has sped up North Korea’s nuclear program since he took power in late 2011, testing more powerful weapons and developing longer-range missiles to carry them. His regime is thought to possess rockets that can hit South Korea and Japan with as many as 20 atomic bombs, and it’s now focused on building a long-range missile capable of hitting Washington, D.C., with a nuclear warhead.

The Hwasong 12 fired on May 14 may represent a new stage of development if reports are true that it used an engine completely designed and constructed in North Korea, according to Jeffrey Lewis, a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California. “The possibility of developing an ICBM that works reliably is much more real,” he said. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the test showed Kim is “in a state of paranoia.” While the regime already possesses the Taepodong-2, which can reach all parts of the U.S., analysts say it has been used only for launching satellites into orbit and probably wouldn’t be suitable to deliver nuclear warheads.

More worrisome is the yet-to-be tested KN-08, a road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile. Its range of about 11,500 kilometers (7,100 miles) would threaten a host of major U.S. cities. At the beginning of the year, Kim said that North Korea was in the “last stage” of preparing to test-fire an ICBM—prompting U.S. President Donald Trump to tweet: “It won’t happen!”

Kim has successfully fired short and intermediate-range rockets dozens of times in the past few years. A military parade he oversaw on April 15 also suggested that the regime has two different ICBMs under development in addition to the KN-08.