North Korean ballistic missiles fired at Ukraine by Russian forces since late December have been far more precise than previous salvos of the weapons launched over the past year, two senior Ukrainian officials told Reuters.
The increase in accuracy – to within 50m of the intended target – suggests that knowledge gained from the battlefield in Ukraine is helping North Korea further develop its missile technology, said one of the sources, a senior military officer.
The officer, who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive information, described a marked improvement in the precision in the majority of the North Korean ballistic missiles that hit Ukraine over the past several weeks.
A second source, a senior Ukrainian government official confirmed the findings when asked by Reuters.
Yang Uk, a weapons expert at Seoul’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said such improvements in North Korean missile capabilities have troubling implications for its potential to threaten South Korea, Japan and the United States or sell upgraded weapons to “failed” states or armed groups.
Ukraine’s defence ministry did not respond to requests for comment. Ukraine does not usually disclose the outcome of Russian missile and drone strikes on military targets.
North Korea’s military programmes have developed rapidly in recent years, including short- and intermediate-range missiles that Pyongyang says can be tipped with nuclear warheads.
However, until its involvement in Ukraine, the long-isolated nation had never tested the new weapons in combat.
The defence ministries in Russia and South Korea, as well as South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, did not respond to Reuters questions.
The sources and weapons expert Yang said it was not clear what modifications North Korea had made.
In November 2024, researchers at a U.S.-based think tank concluded that North Korea was expanding a key weapons manufacturing complex that assembles a type of short-range missile used by Russia in Ukraine, based on satellite images.
The military officer said forensic analysis conducted on debris had not identified changes to the design of the missiles, although there had been very little debris left to analyse.
Two possible explanations were the missiles being fitted with better navigation systems or with a steering mechanism to help manoeuvring, the officer said.
The advance in the weapons’ precision appeared suddenly, the military officer said, after months of inaccurate launches.
The new assessment was based on where the missiles – identified as North Korean through examinations at blast sites – fell in relation to the presumed target in the vicinity, the officer said.
Reuters
