North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on July 4, 2018 visited a monument celebrating the country’s Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test-fire, NK Pro understands from multiple informed sources.

Kim’s visit to the monument – which took place around three weeks after his historic meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in Singapore and his nominal commitment to work towards denuclearization – has never been reported by North Korea’s state media.

Informed sources who visited the site told NK Pro that official DPRK guides there on multiple occasions told visitors about a Kim Jong Un visit to the site on July 4, 2018.

Kim inspected the monument on July 4 because that date marked the one-year anniversary of North Korea’s initial ICBM test, which used a Hwasong-14 type missile, guides were reported to have said.

Though few people have seen the Hwasong-15 ICBM monument, a growing number of delegations have reportedly been taken there in recent months.

One of the sources said the site had been opened on February 28, 2018 and was named the Monument to the Perfection of the Nation’s Nuclear Power.

One observer said that the fact Kim Jong Un is said to have visited the facility so soon after the Singapore summit was particularly notable.

“Internally, that would be a good sign that the pledge to pursue ‘denuclearization of the Korean peninsula’ in Singapore did not amount to unilateral disarmament,” said Ankit Panda, a regular contributor to NK Pro.

Meanwhile, “the late-February opening would have come as inter-Korean talks had begun after the start of the PyeongChang Olympics,” he said. “Most importantly, the opening preceded the April 20 declaration by Kim that his byungjin line had been successfully realized.”

Comprising a large cement structure featuring a mural with an inscribed poem and a depiction of the Hwasong-15 ICBM blasting off on one side, ground-level photos seen by NK Pro show that large delegations of DPRK citizens appear to be visiting the facility regularly. 

“Fire bravely for the party and the fatherland!” an excerpt of the Korean-language monument poem — which can be read in full here — says.

“With the thunder of the Paektu brilliant commander that cracked the universe,” it continues, “the ‘Hwasong-15’-type capable of covering the entirety of the continental U.S.”

Echoing source remarks about when the facility opened, the poem is signed off “February 28 Juche 107 (2018)” – just three days after the Pyeongchang “Peace” Winter Olympics in South Korea came to an end.

On the other side of the structure the date “11.29” is prominently displayed, representing the date on which DPRK state media officially announced the successful test-firing of the Hwasong-15 ICBM.

Launch pad? 

To the immediate north of the monument is a flat but lightly cracked concrete plate of about 7.60m x 5.75m, featuring eight protruding metal tabs, other ground-level photos obtained by NK Pro indicate.

Guides at the monument, NK Pro understands, have explained that the eight metal tabs connected to a large steel platform upon which the Hwasong-15 was launched from, explaining why there were no scorch marks or signs of significant damage to the concrete area.

However, satellite imagery analyst Dave Schmerler – who first spotted construction of the monument in March 2018 – said that he believed the guides’ “burn mark remark is an embellishment”.

“They repaved the whole thing during construction of the monument,” he said, suggesting, therefore, that the launchpad presentation feature may have been “an addition post-test, probably marking the point where the missile launched”.

Overall, Panda said that “the obvious role of these monuments, which had been seen going up in satellite imagery, was to commemorate the significance of the ICBM launches in 2017.”

“These delivery means for nuclear weapons remain an important accomplishment of the Kim Jong Un era and now we have better evidence than before that Kim’s ongoing elevation in the state propaganda mythos is entirely intertwined with these significant achievement.”

Edited by Oliver Hotham

Photo credits: Google Earth, NK Pro