Map suggests Japanese waters may have been target for North Korean ICBM

North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un looks on during the test-fire of inter-continental ballistic missile Hwasong-14.
PHOTO: REUTERS

TOKYO - Analysis of a barely legible map on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's desk has revealed a missile trajectory that potentially puts its strike inside Japan's territorial waters.

A Washington-based analyst's interpretation of detail in a picture of Kim taken during the launch of North's first ICBM has been obtained by The Japan Times.

The image taken on July 4 during the launch of the Hwasong-14 (HS-14) shows Kim at a desk with a virtually illegible map of the missile's trajectory .

Mr Nathan Hunt, an open-source intelligence analyst with the Strategic Sentinel defence contractor, tried to make the unreadable document understable. He compared his reassembled and unblurred map to a similar one seen in photos released by the North from its May 14 launch of an intermediate-range Hwasong-12 (HS-12) missile.

His report highlighted something new: a projected trajectory that "could have potentially put the missile inside Japan's territorial waters," according to The Japan Times.

Strategic Sentinel said close analysis of the map appears to show the splash down point of the missile just off Okushiri Island located west of Hokkaido, Japan. That trajectory could have potentially put the missile inside Japans' Territorial Waters, the area of sovereign waters 12 nautical miles off any country.

The North has not yet fired one so close to Japanese territory"It is however unlikely that North Korea actually intended the missile to travel along the abnormal trajectory that has been found," said Strategic Sentinel. It concludes that such a move would be dangerous on the part of North Korea and could have resulted in a military response from Japan to safeguard its territory. Since the HS-14 could have easily traveled anywhere into Japanese territory, the report suggests that the trajectory shown on the map was meant to be a signal to Japan and its allies.

The Japan Times quotes Mr John Schilling, a North Korea expert and aerospace engineer, as saying the map may have been purposely displayed by Pyongyang as an indication of its capabilities.

"I think it is very likely that North Korea either intended to signal that the ICBM test could have reached the edge of Japanese territorial waters, or intended the missile to actually reach Japanese waters and fell short, but there is no way to know which," Mr Schilling was quoted as saying.

But The Japan Times also quotes Joshua Pollack, editor of the US-based Nonproliferation Review and a leading expert on nuclear and missile proliferation commenting that thrre may be an element of "overthinking" on the part of analysts.

The newspaper said Mr Pollack called the new imagery analysis "very interesting," but he does not believe the map was an intentional signal.

Instead, he suggested that the North had either "decided at the last minute to give themselves a greater margin of comfort, and the map didn't reflect that" or simply missed their target, according to The Japan Times.

"Either is possible," Mr Pollack was quoted as saying. "It's a new missile and they're flirting with the edge here.

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