North Korea's launch of the Pukguksong-2 ballistic missile is another example of the steady advancement that Pyongyang has made in developing its nuclear and missile arsenal. But it also raises the question of how Pyongyang has been able to master such technology.
Pyongyang's propaganda proclaimed the test of the intermediate range missile as an example of "a new strategic weapon of our own style," implying that North Korean technicians had developed the missile from scratch. But most analysts believe that North Korea has always received help from other countries in developing its nuclear and missile program since the 1980s.
Western analysts are now debating who might have helped in developing Pukguksong-2. The missile does represent significant technical progress for North Korea. It is a solid fuel missile, similar to the submarine-launched one, the Pukguksong-1, that Pyongyang tested last year. Solid-fueled missiles allow for greater mobility and quicker launches than liquid-fueled missiles that make them easier to hide, but their technology is also more difficult to master.
What has surprised analysts is the rapid pace that North Korea has shown in developing a solid-fueled missile after years spent testing liquid-fueled ones. That has increased suspicions that North Korea has received outside help.
Some analysts believe that both Pukguksong missiles bear a resemblance to China's submarine-launched JL-1 submarine-launched missile and land-based DF-21 version. North Korea has already used related Chinese-made mobile missile systems, including transporter-erector-launcher(TEL) vehicles, although apparently the TEL used in the Pukguksong-2 launch was of its own design.
But instead of acquiring the Pukguksong technology directly from China, North Korea could have also gotten it from Pakistan, which has developed its own arsenal of mobile, solid-fuel medium-range missiles with the help of China.
Pakistan, of course, has been implicated before in the North's nuclear program. Pyongyang is believed to have obtained centrifuge technology in the 1990s from the smuggling network of A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, to construct a large uranium enrichment facility for its nuclear program.
The fingerprints of foreign assistance have been evident throughout North Korea's missile development over the last 40 years. In the 1970s, China offered to transfer technology to Pyongyang to produce liquid-fueled tactical missiles and trained North Korean scientists in the design and production of missile airframes and engines.
A decade later, North Korea was collaborating with Egypt in reverse engineering the Soviet Scud-B missile, whose technology dated from the 1950s. Iran was also said to have become involved in this process as well. This led to the North Korea's deployment of the mobile, short-ranged Hwasong-5 missile.
Scud technology, including some possibly obtained from China, led to the development of the larger and longer-range mobile Nodong missile by 1990s. North Korea then sold the missiles to Iran, Pakistan and Syria as part of an exchange of technologies and test data.
There are suggestions that North Korea acquired obsolete missile production lines from Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union. This would have enabled it to begin developing multi-stage rockets, such as Taepodong missile, that represent a serious technical challenge to overcome.
When North Korea launched the Unha-2 rocket in 2009 in an unsuccessful attempt to place a satellite in orbit, analysts noticed that the third stage appear to match that of the last stage of Iran's Safir satellite launcher, which has been successfully tested by Tehran several months earlier.Analysts also believed that the second stage of the Unha-2 may have been based on a 1960s-era Soviet submarine-launched ballistic missile, increasing speculation that Pyongyang had acquired outdated production lines from Russia.
Given the history of the North Korean missile program and its apparent heavy reliance on foreign technology, it is clear that the most obvious way to stop Pyongyang's missile development would be to curb outside assistance instead of relying on economic sanctions alone.
In theory, international mechanisms, such as 35-nation Missile Technology Control Regime, are already in place to prevent the proliferation of missile technology. But among North Korea's four main missile "enablers," only Russia is a member of this organization.
It would appear then that the U.S. and the rest of the international community should apply increased pressure on China, Iran and Pakistan to stop supplying missile technology to North Korea instead of just focusing on punishing Pyongyang.
But the success of such effort will be difficult. Much of the equipment involved in missile production isconsidered "dual use" for civilian purposes as well and thus hard to regulate in terms of trade. This will continue to give North Korea many opportunities to acquire the needed technology and production hardware from complacent governments or rogue scientists and engineers.
John Burton, a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is now a Washington,. D.C.-based journalist and consultant. He can be reached at johnburtonft@yahoo.com.
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