North Korea’s Most Powerful Missile Now Has Its Own Shrine

North Korea’s Most Powerful Missile Now Has Its Own Shrine

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The sleuths suspected that the satellite images showed the launching site of North Korea’s most powerful missile, but they were baffled by a mysterious bustle of construction there.

Closer scrutiny, astronomy and a smart hunch about North Korea propaganda confirmed it. They were witnessing the construction of a shrine to the missile, the Hwasong-15, the first built by North Korea that could hit anywhere in the United States.

Routinely, the image sleuths try to examine sites where the North launches its mobile missiles in a hunt for deployment clues and terrain suitability. North Korea, a mountainous nation, has relatively few locations flat and accessible enough for the firing of missiles from heavy mobile launchers, and analysts of late have carefully tracked the rise in launching-site diversity.

The sleuths knew the general area of the Nov. 28 missile firing because they had identified the factory where the mobile launcher had been readied. The hot spot had to be nearby.

They identified two plausible sites and then reached out to Marco Langbroek, a Dutch astronomer who helped them focus their suspicions on one particular location by studying photographs of star positions during the nighttime launching.

But last month the satellite analysts began scratching their heads. The site, carved out of farm fields and small roads, began to crawl with trucks, digging gear and construction crews. What was going on?

David Schmerler, an analyst at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, in Monterey, Calif., knows a thing or two about North Korean culture and propaganda, having watched many official videos of visitors going to historic sites honored by the government.

He knows a giant memorial when he sees one.

“At first, I wondered if I had made a mistake,” he recalled in a recent report on the finding. “Maybe the construction was for something else, and the timing was just a coincidence.” Then, as work proceeded, he realized that his hunch had been correct.

His report shows five close-up images. They start on Dec. 5 with the bare-bones launching site and then show a flurry of major construction for a project that seems to be nearing completion. The monthlong sequence of building images goes from Feb. 11 to March 11.

Slideshow by photo services

In an interview, Mr. Schmerler said that, in addition to a parking area, the site shows a reconstructed launching pad and, next to it, a large memorial of undetermined features and height. He added that he expected future images to show landscaping.

“They’re going to make this look a lot prettier than a random monument in a farming town,” he said. “It’s a huge achievement for the North Koreans. They’re going to celebrate it in every way possible, including with a monument at the launch site where they can stir the revolutionary spirit.”

North Korea builds lots of large stone monuments. A review of official photographs shows that they typically fall into a heroic mold meant to inspire with height or width, or both. They’re always cut with large letters.

Snapshots of the rising missile memorial were possible because the Center for Nonproliferation Studies uses surveillance imagery from Planet, a company in San Francisco that has deployed swarms of tiny satellites that capture images of the Earth’s landmass daily. Its smallest satellite is about the size of a shoe box.

North Korea’s other celebrations for the Hwasong-15 have included an event honoring the missile scientists in the nation’s capital, the issuing of a commemorative stamp and the holding of a giant indoor concert featuring a polished film of the liftoff punctuated with fireworks and a light show.

The official Korean Central News Agency quoted Kim Jong-un, the nation’s leader, as declaring shortly after the successful launching, “We have finally realized the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force.”