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North Korea has released photos of the intermediate range ballistic missile it launched Sunday — as well as striking images of Earth purportedly snapped from the projectile.
The test-firing of the Hwasong-12 missile, which North Korean-state media confirmed Monday, was the country’s seventh missile launch so far this year and the first launch of a rocket capable of carrying a nuclear payload in five years.
Photos released by the Korean Central News Agency, the official government mouthpiece, show the missile blasting off in a plume of flame and smoke from a mobile launching platform and flying through the clouds toward space.
Other images taken by a camera in the missile’s warhead capture views of the Korean Peninsula from space.
KCNA said the test-firing was intended to test the accuracy of the Hwasong-12 missile, which was fired from a steep angle to keep it from flying over neighboring countries.
Pyongyang released no other details, but South Korea and Japan reported that the missile flew about 497 miles and reached an altitude of 1,242 miles before landing in the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.
The missile is the most powerful that North Korea has tested since 2017, when the country conducted a series of launches as it tried to develop nuclear-capable weapons with the necessary range to target military bases in northeast Asia and the US mainland.
The Hwasong-12 rocket is a ground-to-ground, nuclear-capable weapon with a maximum range of 2,800 miles when fired on a standard trajectory, easily within reach of Guam.
Talks over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program stalled after a 2019 summit between then-President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un failed to reach a breakthrough.
With Post wires
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