Did Former Soviet Scientists Secretly Sell Missile Designs To North Korea?

Military vehicles carry missiles with characters reading 'Pukkuksong' during a military parade marking the 105th birth anniversary of country's founding father, Kim Il Sung in Pyongyang, April 15, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

Daily Mail: North Korea's nuclear advance is thanks to RUSSIAN scientists secretly selling Cold War missile designs after the fall of the Soviet Union

* After collapse of Soviet Union, Russia was looking to exploit missile technology
* A joint venture with the Americans failed so they looked to sell to North Korea
* Scientists from a Russian design bureau believed to have made it to Pyongyang
* North Korea's ­Hwasong rocket strikingly similar to Soviet era submarine missile

North Korea was able to develop a ballistic missile with advanced technology acquired from Russia, new documents have revealed.

The secretive state announced on November 29 that it had tested an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) capable of reaching all of the mainland of the United States, prompting fresh sanctions against Kim Jong-un's regime.

It has now been claimed that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia sold the technology that it used to develop its own ICBM force to Pyongyang.

Read more ....

Update #1: Documents shed light on North Korea's startling gains in sea-based missile technology -- Washington Post
Update #2: How Russia Is Helping North Korea Build the Bombs That Could Start World War III -- Newsweek

WNU Editor: If true .... that Russian experts and engineers helped in the development of North Korea's missile program after the fall of the Soviet Union .... the question that then needs to be asked is why did it take so long to perfect the technology. This post from The Hindustan Times has a good explanation ....

.... “The question that has long been raised is: Did North Korea get this technology from a (Russian) fire sale?” David Wright, a missiles expert at the Union of Concerned Scientists, was quoted as saying. “Did they get plans years ago and are just now at the point where they can build these things?”
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The Post reported that some of the evidence is circumstantial — in 1993, around 60 Russian nuclear scientists were arrested as they attempted to travel to Pyongyang to work as consultants, and they acknowledged to investigators that they had been recruited as a group to assist North Korea in building rockets. Intelligence agencies later concluded that some may have succeeded in their plan.

However, other evidence is more damning. Experts say North Korea’s Hwasong-10, a single-stage missile tested in June 2016, appears to use the same engine and many design features as the Soviet R-27 Zyb.

It is unknown why it has taken the country so long to reproduce these missiles, but experts say North Korea has “long lacked the sophisticated materials, engineering expertise and computer-driven machine tools for the kinds of advanced missiles it has recently tested”, the report said.