SEOUL, South Korea -- North Korea said Saturday that it has successfully performed another "crucial test" at its long-range rocket-launch site that will further strengthen its nuclear deterrent.
U.S. analysts and intelligence experts said they believe the ground test -- the second at the facility in a week, according to North Korea's Academy of Defense Science -- was intended as a signal that the country could soon resume testing of an intercontinental ballistic missile.
In a separate statement, Pak Jong Chon, chief of the Korean People's Army's general staff, asserted that North Korea has built up "tremendous power" and that the findings from the recent tests would be used to develop new weapons to allow the country to "definitely and reliably" counter U.S. nuclear threats.
North Korea in recent weeks has been dialing up pressure to coax concessions from the Trump administration ahead of an end-of-year deadline set by leader Kim Jong Un to salvage faltering nuclear negotiations.
The Academy of Defense Science did not specify what was tested Friday. Just days earlier, the North said that it had conducted a "very important test" at the site on the country's northwestern coast, prompting speculation that it involved a new engine for either an ICBM or a space-launch vehicle.
The testing activity and defiant statements suggest that North Korea is preparing to do something to provoke the United States if Washington doesn't back down and make concessions to ease sanctions and pressure on Pyongyang in the deadlocked nuclear negotiations.
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An unnamed spokesman for the academy said scientists received warm congratulations from members of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea Central Committee who attended the test, which lasted from 10:41 to 10:48 p.m. Friday at the Sohae Satellite Launching Ground, where the North has conducted satellite launches and liquid-fuel missile-engine tests in recent years.
The spokesman said the successful outcome of the latest test, in addition to the one conducted Dec. 7, "will be applied to further bolster up the reliable strategic nuclear deterrent of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea," referring to North Korea's formal name.
"Genuine peace can be safeguarded and our development and future be guaranteed only when the balance of power is completely ensured. We have stored up a tremendous power," Pak said in a statement carried by the country's official Korean Central News Agency.
"We should be ready to cope with political and military provocations of the hostile forces and be familiar with both dialogue and confrontation," Pak said. "Our army is fully ready to thoroughly carry out any decision of the supreme leader with action. ... U.S. and other hostile forces will spend the year-end in peace only when they hold off any words and deeds rattling us."
Kim Dong-yub, a former South Korean military officer who's currently an analyst with Seoul's Institute for Far Eastern Studies, said the North mentioning its nuclear deterrent makes it clear that it tested a new engine for an ICBM, not a satellite-launch vehicle. Kim said it was notable that North Korea announced the specific length of the test, which he said could signal a larger liquid-fuel ICBM engine.
North Korea's current ICBMs, including the Hwasong-15, are built with first stages that are powered by a pair of engines that experts say are modeled after Russian designs. When North Korea first tested the engine in 2016, it said the test lasted for 200 seconds and demonstrated a thrust of 80 tons-force.
The North Korean announcement came a day before Stephen Biegun, the U.S. special representative for North Korea, was to arrive in South Korea for discussions over the nuclear diplomacy. It was unclear whether Biegun would attempt contact with North Korean officials at the inter-Korean border, which has often been used as a diplomatic venue, or whether such an effort would be successful.
During a provocative run of weapons tests in 2017, Kim Jong Un conducted three flight tests of ICBMs that demonstrated the potential to reach deep into the U.S. mainland, raising tensions and triggering verbal warfare with President Donald Trump as they exchanged insults and threats of nuclear annihilation.
Experts say that North Korea would need further tests to establish the missile's performance and reliability, such as improving its accuracy and ensuring that warheads survive the harsh conditions of atmospheric reentry.
Relations between Kim and Trump became cozier last year after diplomacy that led to a June 2018 summit in Singapore, where they issued a vague statement on a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula, without describing when or how it would occur.
But negotiations faltered at Kim's second summit with Trump, held in Vietnam in February. At that summit, the United States rejected North Korean demands for broad sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of the North's nuclear capabilities.
In June of this year, Trump and Kim met at the border between North and South Korea and agreed to resume talks. But an October working-level meeting in Sweden broke down over what the North Koreans described as the Americans' "old stance and attitude."
Kim, who unilaterally suspended nuclear and ICBM tests last year during talks with the U.S. and South Korea, has said North Korea could seek a "new path" if the United States persists with sanctions and pressure.
North Korea has conducted 13 rounds of ballistic missile and rocket artillery tests since May, and it has hinted at lifting its moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests if the Trump administration fails to make substantial concessions before the new year.
Some experts doubt that Kim would revive the tensions of 2017 by restarting nuclear and ICBM tests, which would cross a metaphorical "red line" and risk shattering his hard-won diplomacy with Washington. They say Kim is likely to pressure Trump with military activities that pose less of a direct threat to the U.S. and by bolstering a united front with China and Russia. Both are the North's allies and have called for the U.N. Security Council to consider easing sanctions on Pyongyang to help nuclear negotiations move forward.
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Saturday's news of the test came after U.S. Ambassador Kelly Craft criticized the North's ballistic-missile testing activity, saying during a U.N. Security Council meeting Wednesday that the tests were "deeply counterproductive" and risked closing the door on prospects for negotiating peace.
She also cited North Korean hints of "a resumption of serious provocations." She said that would mean they could launch space vehicles using long-range ballistic-missile technology or test ICBMs, "which are designed to attack the continental United States with nuclear weapons."
While Craft said that the Trump administration is "prepared to be flexible" and take concrete, parallel steps toward an agreement on resuming talks, North Korea described her comments as a "hostile provocation" and warned that Washington may have squandered its chance at salvaging the fragile nuclear diplomacy.
On Thursday, North Korea's Foreign Ministry issued another angry denunciation of the United States, and especially of Washington's criticism of its weapons tests.
"If bolstering of military capabilities for self-defense should be termed an act of destroying global peace and security, there comes the conclusion that all the steps taken by other countries for bolstering up their defense capabilities should be taken issue with," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement.
"Such claims that they are entitled to launch ICBMs any time and we are not allowed to conduct the tests done by any other countries just sheds light on the nature of the bandit-like U.S. which seeks to disarm us completely."
State media reported that Kim will make a big decision before the end of this year on the country's strategic direction, and the Foreign Ministry said U.S. criticism "decisively helped us make a definite decision on what way to choose."
It is unlikely that Biegun's visit will change that calculation, experts said.
"I think we have a good idea of which way Kim is going if he was making his mind up between an ostensibly civilian space launch or a highly provocative intercontinental-range ballistic missile launch," said Ankit Panda, a North Korea expert at the Federation of American Scientists.
The most recent test "is further evidence that he is leaning toward the latter," Panda said.
Kim is widely expected to use a meeting of his Workers' Party's Central Committee, scheduled for this month, and his annual New Year's Day speech to reveal his new policy options.
Information for this article was contributed by Kim Tong-Hyung of The Associated Press; by David E. Sanger and Choe Sang-Hun of The New York Times; and by Simon Denyer of The Washington Post.
A Section on 12/15/2019