Yonhap News Agency:
SEOUL, Feb. 20 (Yonhap) — North Korea displayed mockups of its KN-08 intercontinental ballistic missile at a flower exhibit in Pyongyang, a North Korean propaganda website showed Saturday, in what could be an attempt to show off its military prowess amid tensions with the outside world over its nuclear and missile programs.
A video posted on the North’s main propaganda website, Uriminzokkiri, showed a mockup of the road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile and a mockup of the missile with an improved warhead at an exhibition of Kimjongilia — a hybrid flower named after former leader Kim Jong-il.
North Korea opened the flower exhibit on Feb. 15 to mark Kim’s birthday, though he died of heart failure in 2011.
Kim’s birthday on Feb. 16 is one of the North’s biggest national holidays along with the birthday of his late father, North Korea’s founder Kim Il-sung.
The North first showed off a life-sized mockup of the KN-08 during a military parade in April 2012 to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of the North’s late founder.
The KN-08, known to have a range of some 12,000 kilometers, is capable of flying as far as the U.S. mainland. But the North has not conducted a test of that missile.
The video footage also showed a mockup of the long-range rocket that North Korea launched earlier this month to put what it claims is a satellite into orbit.
Still, South Korea, the U.S. and other regional powers view it as a cover for testing its ballistic missile technology, which is banned under U.N. resolutions.
The U.N. Security Council has been working on a resolution to impose additional sanctions on North Korea over its recent nuclear test and long-range rocket launch.
