North Korea has in recent years continued to make significant progress with regards to developments in its ballistic missile capabilities. North Korea’s arsenal of short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) now includes an array of advanced and potent missiles that appear to be increasingly capable of presenting a significant challenge to missile defenses deployed in South Korea, while the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has also continued to churn out new variants of its Pukguksong series of submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs).

Recent years have also seen North Korea make significant strides related to its long-range missile capabilities. 2017 saw North Korea carry out its first – and to date only – successful tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), testing its Hwasong-14 ICBM twice that year and its Hwasong-15 variant once. Since then, North Korea has unveiled an additional ICBM model – dubbed the Hwasong-16 – that is larger than either of its predecessors. The result is a North Korea that increasingly appears capable of delivering a nuclear-armed ICBM to the continental United States.

North Korea’s ability to make such substantial progress in the development of its ballistic missile capabilities – particularly with regards to its long-range missiles – is likely the result of a number of factors, including simply the progress that can be expected to emerge from sustained and dedicated efforts. Since coming to power in 2011, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has presided over a significant increase in North Korean ballistic missile tests. This increased effort has borne fruit, producing breakthroughs that have themselves resulted in additional breakthroughs; North Korea’s development of its Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) that is capable of hitting the island of Guam, for example, proved to be the foundation upon which the Hwasong-14 was built.

But North Korea’s progress in the development of its ballistic missiles has also most assuredly been the result of new technology becoming available to the DPRK, and one important source of this technology has likely been Ukraine.

Scientists have been a favorable group within North Korea for much of the country’s existence, and Kim Il Sung is believed to have sent North Korean scientists to study in various parts of the Soviet Union and the socialist world, which may well have included Ukraine. The country is also believed to have attempted to recruit suddenly out of work Soviet scientists and missile engineers after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which is again likely to have included efforts to woo Ukrainian experts.

But scientific exchanges and rogue scientists and engineers likely do not form the entirety – or even the most important aspect – of the connection between Ukraine and the North Korean ballistic missile program. Instead, the more significant connection likely revolves around a particular rocket factory near the Ukrainian city of Dnipro known as Yuzhmash. The factory was once a major production site for advanced Soviet ballistic missiles, but has now shifted its focus to the production of such things as rockets designed to launch satellites into space; the site did, however, remain a common storage site for space ballistic missile components, including engines.

North Korea has for many years had an interest in the site, with one former employee of the factory recalling a tour he gave to North Koreans posing as tourists in the early 2000s. They were almost certainly not tourists, however, and the United Nations Panel of Experts has confirmed that in 2011-2012 North Korean operatives attempted to steal missile designs from the factory before they were apprehended by the Ukrainian Security Services.

Despite the failure of that operation, North Korea does appear to have successfully acquired Soviet missile technology that has proven essential in the development of its own ballistic missile capabilities. Analysis of the Hwasong-14 has revealed that the missile looks to be powered by several Soviet RD-250 engines, which may have come from the Yuzhmash facility. It is not entirely clear how North Korea acquired the engines though the most likely explanation involves a DPRK black market purchase.

Regardless, the connection between Ukraine and the North Korean ballistic missile program reveals both how North Korea was able to so quickly advance its long-range missile capabilities and the lengths to which the country will go in order to do so, as well as the degree of difficulty associated with preventing advances in North Korea’s missile program.

Eli Fuhrman is a contributing writer for The National Interest.

Image: Wikimedia Commons