NORTH KOREA – North Korea has claimed it fired a new intermediate-range ballistic missile tipped with a hypersonic warhead which “will reliably contain any rivals in the Pacific region”. The launch on Monday – Pyongyang’s first in two months – came as US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, was in Seoul for talks with some of South Korea’s key leaders. Hypersonic weapons are more difficult to track and shoot down, as they are able to travel at more than five times the speed of sound.

North Korea is claiming their missile flew 12 times the speed of sound, for about 1,500km. South Korea’s military earlier said the missile flew 1,100km before falling into the sea, adding that it “strongly condemns” this “clear act of provocation”. North Korea has previously test-fired hypersonic missiles. Pictures published by KCNA showed that Monday’s missile resembled one that was launched in April last year. But Pyongyang claims its new hypersonic missile features a new “flight and guidance control system” and a new engine made of carbon fibre.

The country’s leader Kim Jong Un said Monday’s launch “clearly showed the rivals what we are doing and that we are fully ready to use even any means to defend our legitimate interests”, state news agency KCNA said on Tuesday. Ankit Panda, a nuclear weapons specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said the launch of a new weapon is “unsurprising”.

“We’ve known that North Korea has been working with composite materials for use in missiles for a number of years now. “The appeal of these materials is to broadly improve the performance and reliability of the payload… Better materials can increase the odds of their survival to the target,” he told the BBC. (BBC)