North Korea tested a cluster-bomb warhead designed for its tactical ballistic missiles on Saturday, October 31, and announced plans to put four types of cluster warheads into service with its military units by the end of 2026, according to its state news agency.
Pyongyang’s claim matters because a cluster warhead turns one short-range missile into a weapon that can strike many targets across a wide area at once, and the test landed days before the United States holds midterm elections, at a moment when Washington, Seoul and Tokyo are publicly pressing North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.
North Korea’s Missile Administration carried out the test to assess the combat adaptability and power of the warhead, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Sunday, November 1, as reported by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.
Research institutes under the Missile Administration said the “Standard Type 2” warhead can devastate a target area of 12 to 13 hectares at its highest density, KCNA said, using stronger language that it could turn such an area “into ashes”. That area is roughly equal to 18 soccer fields, according to Seoul Economic Daily’s conversion of the same figure.
Those performance figures are North Korea’s own claims and have not been independently verified. No outside observer has published its own measurement of the damage area, and the photographs released by state media were selected by Pyongyang.
A cluster warhead carries many smaller submunitions inside a single warhead and scatters them in the air, so one missile can hit several targets spread over a wide area instead of a single point.
The general director of the Missile Administration said cluster warheads are classified into four categories by purpose, including special-purpose and standard types, and that all of them will be available for units to select and use according to the purpose of the operation and the characteristics of the target within this year.
Kim Jong-sik, first vice department director of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, oversaw the test, according to reports based on the KCNA dispatch. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was not reported to be present at Saturday’s test.
South Korea tracked the launch
South Korea’s military said it had been monitoring the missile launch, adding that the missile was fired toward the Yellow Sea from an area around the northwestern county of Chongju.
“Under close information sharing between South Korea and the United States, (we) tracked relevant activities before North Korea’s missile launch and maintained a readiness posture,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Sunday, a day after the test.
Seoul’s military usually announces North Korean ballistic missile launches shortly after they occur, but it did not separately announce this launch on Saturday, according to Yonhap.
Shin Jong-woo, secretary-general of the Seoul-based Korea Defense and Security Forum, said the missile appeared to be the Hwasong-11 Ra, a short-range ballistic missile that North Korea has tested repeatedly in recent years. Seoul Economic Daily reported that the missile is presumed to be the Hwasong-11, known as North Korea’s version of the US ATACMS tactical missile, with a range of about 400 kilometres.
North Korea previously tested cluster bombs mounted on a Hwasong-11 Ra tactical ballistic missile in April, in a launch overseen by Kim Jong Un and his daughter Ju-ae, according to Yonhap. Photographs released by state media at the time showed the missile launch, the warhead exploding in midair and its submunitions scattering, Yonhap reported.
Test follows trilateral talks in Atlanta
Saturday’s test came as the foreign ministers of South Korea, the United States and Japan renewed their call for the complete denuclearisation of North Korea during trilateral talks in Atlanta.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Saturday that President Donald Trump remains open to talks with Kim Jong Un if Pyongyang is willing to discuss issues of concern to Washington and its allies, according to Yonhap. No meeting between the two leaders has been scheduled.
The test also followed a busy week of North Korean weapons activity. North Korea fired around 10 ballistic missiles from its east coast toward the sea on Thursday, October 29, while German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was visiting South Korea for a summit, according to reports of the launch.
Hong Min, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification, interpreted the cluster-munition test as a response to the ongoing South Korea-US joint “Freedom Flag” exercise, according to Maeil Business Newspaper. North Korea’s Defence Ministry spokesman had criticised the exercise on October 30 and warned of a military response.
More than 100 countries have banned cluster munitions under a 2008 convention, but North Korea, South Korea and the United States have not joined it.
What is independently confirmed is narrower than Pyongyang’s claims: a missile was launched from North Korea’s northwest toward the Yellow Sea on October 31, South Korea and the United States tracked it, and North Korea publicly claimed a cluster-warhead success the next day. Whether the warhead performs as KCNA describes, and whether all four types reach military units by the end of the year, remains unconfirmed, and any response from Washington and Seoul will show in their next public statements and in the pace of joint exercises on the peninsula.
