North Korea displayed fake missiles in its recent street parade in an apparent bid to exaggerate its military prowess, a U.S. news report said Thursday, citing analysis by government and civilian experts here.
A set of North Korean weaponry rolled through the streets of the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, in a July 26 ceremony to mark the Korean War Armistice anniversary.
It included a purported road-mobile Musudan medium-range missile and a Hwasong-13 intercontinental ballistic missile.
"Our assessment is that what we are looking at is most likely simulators used for training purposes,”experts at the Obama administration were quoted as saying in a statement to NBC News.
They reviewed high-resolution civilian photos of the ordnance taken during the parade. But they did not specify a reason for their assessment.
Markus Schiller, an aerospace engineer in Munich and former RAND Corp. military analyst, also told NBC, "My opinion is that it's a big hoax."
There was no evidence on the rear of the Hwasong-13 of retro rockets necessary to separate the stages, which are critical if an ICBM is to reach sub-orbital space and strike distant targets, Schiller added.
He argued that it was the same one North Korea displayed in a military parade in April.
"I can tell that on the mock-ups, they simply changed the markings and serial numbers from last year's parade to make it look like they have more missiles," he said.
Some analysts say North Korea's nuclear program has hit a snag, which may be related to the absence of Pak To-chun, a communist party official in charge of the nation's missile and nuclear development.
"In my judgment, North Korea aborted the planned Musudan test last April because of some technical glitches discovered in its untested missile system at the pre-launch stage," said Alexandre Mansourov, a visiting scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Pak might have been purged or demoted due to the problem, he said. (Yonhap News)
