TOKYO \u2014 North Korea conducted a ground test of a new type of high-thrust rocket engine that leader Kim Jong Un is calling a revolutionary breakthrough for the country’s space program, the North’s state media said Sunday.
It’s hard to know whether this test was deliberately timed to coincide with Tillerson’s visit, but Pyongyang has been highly critical of ongoing U.S.-South Korea war games just south of the Demilitarized Zone and often conducts some sort of high-profile operation of its own in protest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier this month, it fired off four ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan, reportedly reaching within 120 miles of Japan’s shoreline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Japan, which was Tillerson’s first stop before traveling to South Korea and China, hosts tens of thousands of U.S. troops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While building ever better long-range missiles and smaller nuclear warheads to pair with them, North Korea has marked a number of successes in its space program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It launched its latest satellite \u2014 the Kwangmyongsong 4, or Brilliant Star 4 \u2014 into orbit on Feb. 7 last year, just one month after conducting what it claims was its first test of a hydrogen bomb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It put its first satellite into orbit in 2012, a feat few other countries have achieved. In 2013, rival South Korea launched a satellite into space from its own soil for the first time, though it needed Russian help to build the rocket’s first stage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kim called the test “a great event of historic significance” for the country’s indigenous rocket industry, a KCNA report said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":116617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":23,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[45,11,23],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1214],"class_list":["post-61634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-global","category-space"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"6QPA6T6FQ5DYHPRUKSE5NCQ6IY","arc_canonical_url":"\/space\/2017\/03\/20\/north-korea-tests-new-type-of-rocket-engine\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n