[Anchor]
North Korea has been consecutively disclosing performance tests of cluster munitions, weapons referred to as "steel rain" and "the devil's weapon." This is analyzed as an intention to maximize fear.
Reporter Kim Minjun reports.
[Reporter]
Multiple yellow lights covering the dark night sky fall all at once.
This is the scene of "cluster munitions," presumed to have been used by the Iranian military during the Iran-Israel war.
These weapons, nicknamed "steel rain" and "the devil's weapon," disperse and detonate multiple small bomblets contained within a single bomb over a wide area.
North Korea has been successively disclosing destructive power tests of its cluster munitions, claiming that it launched cluster warheads loaded onto a ballistic missile on October 31 and onto a cruise missile on November 3.
Cruise missiles equipped with cluster munitions are analyzed to be intended for preemptively striking South Korean airports or runways to ground the Air Force, or for targeting underground bunkers.
Through two rounds of power tests, North Korea disclosed photos of the bomblets and their blast spread; its use of expressions such as "standard type" and "heavy type" indicates that it has a classification system for cluster warheads.
While stating that it is "closely watching" the situation, the South Korean military explained that South Korea has already developed and is technologically ahead with such weapons, assessing North Korea's tests to be for show rather than an indication of operational deployment.
[Jang Doyoung / Director of Public Affairs at the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "Our military already developed and deployed weapon systems related to precision strike capabilities that overwhelm the technology North Korea claims, 20 years ago."]
[Kang Geon-jak / First Deputy Director of the National Security Office: "Still, weapons like these need to be deployed in large numbers to field units. We do not see much of such movement yet."]
More than 110 countries worldwide have joined the international convention prohibiting the production and use of cluster munitions out of concern over civilian casualties, but the United States, China, Russia, and both South and North Korea have not joined.
North Korea's disclosure of cluster munition power tests is also analyzed as an attempt to respond to joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises conducted around the same time, while maximizing fear in South Korea to ratchet up pressure against Seoul.
(Video by Park Seon-soo)
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