# ANALYSIS: Kim Jong Un Tests Missiles on the 76th Anniversary of the Korean War

> June 25, 2026. Seventy-six years to the day since North Korean forces crossed the 38th Parallel to ignite a war that would kill 5 million people on the Korean peninsula. Kim Jong Un chose this date — precisely this date — to personally oversee tests of a new generation of weapons systems. This is not a coincidence. In Pyongyang, nothing ever is.

- Author: Maxime Marquette
- Publisher: MadMax (https://mad-max.co)
- Section: Analysis
- Published: 2026-06-27
- Canonical URL: https://mad-max.co/en/article/analyse-kim-jong-un-teste-ses-missiles-le-jour-du-76e-anniversaire-de-la-guerre

## Key takeaways

- Kim reportedly supervised tests of an upgraded 240mm 24-tube MLRS with autonomous guidance and a 90km range, a special mission tactical ballistic missile warhead, and a 155mm long-range self-propelled howitzer with a 65km range.
- The author reads the three systems together as an opening-of-conflict doctrine aimed at airfields, ports and command centers, and as a response to South Korean and American missile defenses such as THAAD.
- The tests are placed within a five-year modernization plan launched in January 2021, alongside a May 2026 HIMARS-like launcher and a newly commissioned destroyer.
- The article links North Korean progress to lessons from Ukraine and to suspected Russian technology transfers, noting that the UN Panel of Experts was dissolved in March 2024 after a Russian veto.
- The author argues China could pressure Pyongyang but has strategic reasons not to, and concludes that the realistic policy is containment and deterrence rather than denuclearization.

## Introduction: The Date Chosen in Pyongyang Is Never a Coincidence

### June 25, 1950 as operational memory

June **25, 2026**. Seventy-six years to the day since **North Korean** forces crossed the **38th Parallel** to ignite a war that would kill **5 million people** on the Korean peninsula. **Kim Jong Un** chose this date — precisely this date — to personally oversee tests of a new generation of weapons systems. This is not a coincidence. In **Pyongyang**, nothing ever is.

North Korean state news agency **KCNA** reported the following day — **June 26, 2026** — that leader **Kim Jong Un** had supervised the test of an **upgraded 240mm 24-tube multiple launch rocket system**, a **special mission warhead for a tactical ballistic missile**, and a **155mm long-range self-propelled howitzer**. All under the framework of a five-year artillery and missile modernization program. **Kim** reportedly described the objective as building a « deadly and destructive offensive posture » built on principles of **automation**, **long range**, and **ultra-precision**.

### Seoul and Washington record, analyze, worry

South Korea's **Joint Chiefs of Staff** detected the launches. The **Pentagon** confirmed analyzing the data. **Al Jazeera** reported that **Seoul** was simultaneously announcing it was training an army of « drone warriors » to respond to growing North Korean capabilities. On the Korean peninsula, every **Kim Jong Un** test is a message. Decoding that message requires understanding what was tested, why now, and what it reveals about **Pyongyang's** real intentions and capabilities.

This is the purpose of this analysis. Not a rhetorical condemnation — which would serve no purpose against a regime that has learned to absorb them without effect — but a rigorous attempt to understand what these tests mean about **North Korea's** military evolution, the security of the peninsula, and the challenges this poses to **Seoul**, **Washington**, and regional stability in the Indo-Pacific.

*Every Kim Jong Un test is a military history lesson disguised as a provocation. June 25 is not just an anniversary for internal propaganda. It is a message addressed to Seoul and Washington: we remember 1950, we remember the line that was crossed, and we are technically capable of doing it again at a different scale.*

## What Was Tested: A Systems Analysis

### The 240mm 24-tube MLRS: mass artillery made precise

The first system tested — the **240mm 24-tube multiple launch rocket system (MLRS)** — is a significant evolution of a capability **North Korea** has possessed for decades. **Pyongyang's** long-range artillery is one of the most direct threats to **Seoul**, whose northern districts sit less than **60 kilometers** from the demilitarized zone. Thousands of North Korean artillery pieces are deployed in tunnels and fortified positions along the **DMZ**, capable of striking the South Korean capital within minutes.

The novelty of the June **25, 2026** test: the upgraded version of the **240mm MLRS** integrates an **autonomous precision guidance system** and has an extended range of **90 kilometers**. This combination — mass fire from a 24-tube MLRS, plus autonomous precision guidance, plus 90km range — qualitatively transforms the threat. This is no longer merely a saturation weapon for striking an urban area. It is a system capable of precisely targeting specific infrastructure: airports, ports, fuel depots, command centers. **KCNA** explicitly mentioned that the warheads aim to « inflict lethal damage on key enemy targets, including airfields, ports, and power facilities ».

### The special mission warhead for tactical ballistic missile

The second system tested is more opaque but potentially more troubling: a **special mission warhead for a tactical ballistic missile**. North Korean official communications deliberately vague on « special mission » terminology, but defense analysts generally interpret this as either warheads capable of dispersing submunitions (cluster-bomb type), or — more troubling hypothesis — warheads that can be fitted with a tactical nuclear charge.

In **April 2026**, **North Korea** had already tested **Hwasong-11** missiles equipped with « fragmentation-head » and « fragmentation mine » warheads, striking a target at approximately **136 km** in a **12 to 13 hectare** zone — demonstrating concentrated suppression capability. The June 25 test appears to represent a further step in the development of these specialized warheads. Without access to full technical data, the exact nature of the warhead cannot be confirmed — but the combination with precision guidance suggests a deliberate effort to make North Korean tactical ballistic missiles capable of striking high-value targets with sufficient precision for a mission against critical infrastructure.

*The term "special mission" in Pyongyang's language is designed to be ambiguous. It allows North Korea to maximize psychological effect — leaving open the nuclear possibility — without making a declaration that would force a formal international response. It is rhetoric perfectly calibrated to maximize deterrence at minimum diplomatic cost.*

## The 155mm Self-Propelled Howitzer: Modernized Artillery Warfare

### Extended range to 65 kilometers: a threat beyond the DMZ

The third system tested — the **155mm long-range self-propelled howitzer at 65 kilometers range** — represents a new capability in North Korea's artillery arsenal. **155mm** howitzers are the standard caliber of **NATO** heavy artillery and most modern armies, including **South Korea's**. **KNDS's Caesar**, used by **Ukraine**, is a **155mm** howitzer. The American **M109 Paladin** as well. **North Korea's** development of a **155mm** self-propelled howitzer at **65km** range suggests several things.

First, a standardization effort toward a caliber more common to international standards — which could potentially facilitate ammunition procurement or technology transfer. Second, a **65km** range that places within engagement range military installations well south of the **DMZ**, including American bases like **Camp Humphreys** — the largest American military hub abroad, located approximately **70km** south of **Seoul**. The precision of the long-range shells tested suggests **North Korea** seeks to combine range with precision to threaten specific high-value targets, not merely general urban areas.

### The combination of three systems: a massive initial offensive strategy

The combination of the three systems tested on **June 25, 2026** — precision-autonomous MLRS at 90km range, special mission warhead for tactical ballistic missile, long-range self-propelled howitzer — reveals a coherent strategy. **Kim Jong Un** is not developing defensive capabilities. These systems are optimized for opening war strikes: saturating enemy defenses, neutralizing critical infrastructure, destabilizing command centers — all within the first hours of a conflict.

Military analysts at the **Institute for the Study of War (ISW)** noted in June **2026** that North Korean modernization explicitly targets « South Korean facilities — air bases, ports, logistics depots ». These targets are precisely those that would allow **South Korea** and the **United States** to rapidly reinforce their forces in the event of conflict. By neutralizing them in the first hours, **North Korea** would seek to pin Southern and American forces in place, reducing their capacity to counterattack effectively.

*I look at these three systems together and see a doctrine, not three disparate tests. Kim Jong Un is not testing military toys. He is developing an opening-of-conflict capability aimed at destabilizing South Korean and American defenses in the first hours. This is a deliberate offensive strategy. And it should be taken far more seriously than the habitual "condemnation + waiting" cycles.*

## The Context: Systematic Military Modernization Since 2021

### The 2021-2025 five-year defense plan and its extensions

The June **25, 2026** test program fits within a five-year military modernization plan that **Kim Jong Un** launched at the **8th Congress of the Korean Workers' Party** in January **2021**. This plan calls for: the development of multi-warhead intercontinental missiles, solid-propellant missiles (harder to detect before launch), hypersonic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and tactical artillery modernization. The tests of **2022**, **2023**, **2024**, **2025**, and **2026** all fall within systematic execution of this plan.

What is notable in the **2026** tests — including **January 25, 2026** with an MLRS striking at **358.5km**, the **March 14, 2026** tests with about ten ballistic missiles, and now the June 25 tests — is the growing emphasis on **precision** rather than simply range. The plan's early years were dominated by raw power tests — intercontinental missiles, theoretical nuclear warheads. The **2025-2026** phase seems more focused on tactical precision systems — the weapons that would actually be used in a peninsula conflict.

### The first naval destroyer: a forgotten dimension

The June 25 tests come shortly after **North Korea** commissioned its first naval destroyer, named **Choe Yon Ho** — a development recently reported by North Korean state media. This destroyer represents a qualitative leap in **Pyongyang's** naval capabilities, which had until now essentially focused on a light surface fleet and conventional submarines. A destroyer capable of launching cruise or ballistic missiles from the sea — and potentially carrying nuclear warheads — adds an important dimension to North Korea's deterrence strategy.

All these developments together — precision MLRS, specialized warheads, long-range howitzers, naval destroyer — paint the portrait of a country not simply testing weapons for internal propaganda. It is building a qualitatively different military force from five years ago. The American intelligence community estimates **North Korea** now possesses approximately **50 nuclear warheads**, with enough fissile material to produce about forty more according to the **Stockholm International Peace Research Institute**. Associating this nuclear capability with improved precision delivery systems is not a reassuring trend.

*A North Korean naval destroyer and autonomous-precision MLRS systems: this is no longer the army of an isolated state compensating its weakness through nuclear threat. It is a military force modernizing coherently, rationally, and dangerously effectively. Ignoring this evolution because the topic is uncomfortable would be a grave strategic mistake.*

## The HIMARS Precedent: When North Korea Copies the West

### The May 2026 modular launcher and the explicit HIMARS reference

In **May 2026**, during a test supervised by **Kim Jong Un** on **May 26**, **North Korea** tested what the **ISW** describes as a « modular missile launcher » resembling the American **HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System)**. **HIMARS** is precisely the system that contributed to transforming **Ukraine's** long-range artillery capabilities since **2022**, enabling strikes on Russian ammunition depots and command centers dozens of kilometers deep. **North Korea** has evidently studied **HIMARS** effectiveness on the Ukrainian theater and seeks to develop an equivalent.

This modular system is capable of firing nine **240mm** rockets or a single short-range ballistic missile. The **ISW** also noted it can potentially be configured for nuclear-capable weapons, complicating efforts by **Seoul** and **Washington** to neutralize North Korean nuclear strike capabilities in the event of conflict. The same **May 26** test session included **AI-guided tactical cruise missiles** — another troubling direction, as AI-guided cruise missiles can adapt their trajectory in real time to evade defenses.

### The Ukrainian battlefield experience as a modernization manual for Pyongyang

There is a bitter irony in the fact that the conflict in **Ukraine** — pitting the **West** against **Putin's** expansionism — serves as a military modernization manual for **North Korea**. The war in **Ukraine** has demonstrated with brutal clarity what works on the modern battlefield: reconnaissance and attack drones, long-range precision artillery, cruise missiles against infrastructure, anti-missile defenses. **Pyongyang** has observed, learned, and is adapting its armaments program accordingly. This is the institutional learning capacity of an authoritarian state that has been operating for **80 years** on the basis of a military survival doctrine.

The relationship between **Russia** and **North Korea** adds an additional dimension. Pyongyang has been delivering artillery shells to **Moscow** since **2023** — a military commercial relationship that has provided precious hard currency to a severely sanctioned regime. In return, it is reasonably suspected — though not publicly confirmed — that **Russia** shares military technologies with **North Korea**, particularly in the areas of reconnaissance satellites and potentially missile guidance systems. If true, the modernization observed in the **2026** tests would not be solely the product of North Korean ingenuity, but also of Russian-Korean technology transfer.

*North Korea is studying the war in Ukraine as a masterclass in modern warfare. And one must acknowledge that it is an intelligent reading: if long-range precision artillery changed front lines in Ukraine, why not develop the equivalent? The problem is that the lessons Kim Jong Un draws from the Ukrainian conflict are not the ones the West hoped he would draw.*

## Seoul's Response: Drones and a Deterrence Doctrine Under Pressure

### The South Korean "drone warriors"

South Korea's military response to the June 25 tests is revealing of the evolution of its defense doctrine. **Al Jazeera** reported that **Seoul** was simultaneously announcing the creation of a « drone warriors » unit — soldiers specially trained in the use of military drones for reconnaissance, strikes, and electronic warfare. This announcement is no coincidence of timing. It reflects South Korea's military recognition that drones — again, the lesson from the Ukrainian theater — have become an essential force multiplier on the modern battlefield.

**South Korea** possesses one of **Asia's** best-equipped armies, with approximately **600,000 active-duty soldiers**, modern tanks, an air force equipped with **F-35** aircraft, and a multilayered missile defense system including **PAC-3 Patriot** batteries and the American **THAAD** system deployed on its soil. But the multiplication and diversification of North Korean threats — precision MLRS, short-range ballistic missiles, AI-guided cruise missiles, potentially tactical nuclear warheads — tests the limits of this defensive architecture.

### THAAD and missile defenses under pressure

The **THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense)** system deployed in **South Korea** since **2017** is designed to intercept short, medium, and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in their terminal phase. It represents one of the most advanced available missile defense capabilities. But it has limits: it is less effective against low-trajectory missiles, cruise missiles, and precision-guided artillery rockets. These are precisely the types of systems **North Korea** is developing with the greatest intensity.

North Korea's military doctrine seems to have taken note of these limits. Rather than continuing to invest massively in intercontinental ballistic missiles that dominated previous test cycles, the **2025-2026** programs show a pivot toward systems that complicate missile defense: precision artillery rockets (too numerous and too fast to be individually intercepted), cruise missiles with variable trajectory (no predictable ballistic phase), and special mission warheads (uncertainty about the explosive payload). This is a saturation and diversification strategy deliberately designed to overcome current interception capabilities.

*THAAD is an excellent system against classic ballistic missiles. Kim Jong Un has understood that he needs to diversify his delivery vehicles to bypass that defense. The June 25 tests are a direct response to South Korean and American defenses. This is not blind provocation. It is calculated strategic adaptation.*

## Washington and the Korean Peninsula: A Policy in Suspension

### Trump and Kim: an ambiguous relationship

The **Trump** administration, at the time of the June **25, 2026** tests, is absorbed in nuclear negotiations with **Iran** and internal budget arbitrations for its legislative program. **North Korea** is not at the top of the **White House's** priority pile right now. Which is paradoxically a window of opportunity for **Pyongyang**: testing military systems during a period of relative American inattention.

**Trump** had two summits with **Kim Jong Un** during his first term — in **Singapore** in **2018** and in **Hanoi** in **2019** — without reaching a substantive agreement. He has maintained informal communications with **Kim** but without resuming structured negotiations. His foreign policy doctrine regarding **North Korea** remains vague: neither the « maximum pressure » of his first term's early years, nor a genuine strategic dialogue. This political void leaves **Pyongyang** free to accelerate tests in a relatively unconstrained environment.

### The absence of dialogue as structural permissiveness

The historical cycles of North Korean nuclear policy show a repetitive pattern: **Pyongyang** accelerates tests when it perceives American inattention or strategic incoherence. The **2006-2009** period, the **2012-2017** period: every major acceleration of the North Korean nuclear and missile program has coincided with administration transitions in **Washington** or moments of American attention directed elsewhere. The **2026** tests fit this pattern.

That does not mean dialogue would solve the problem. The two **Trump-Kim** summits demonstrated that **North Korea** uses negotiations to buy time and diplomatic recognition without ever substantively committing to denuclearization. **Kim Jong Un** has no intention of denuclearizing. Nuclear weapons are the guarantor of his regime's survival — the lesson he drew from the fates of **Saddam Hussein** in **Iraq** and **Muammar Gaddafi** in **Libya**, two dictators who renounced their weapons of mass destruction programs and were overthrown and killed. For **Kim**, denuclearization is an announced death.

*Kim Jong Un's logic is perversely coherent: the leaders who renounced nuclear weapons are dead. Those who kept them are still alive and in power. In this logic, negotiating with Washington on denuclearization only makes sense as a delaying tactic — buying time to perfect capabilities while talks proceed. This is brutal. It is also rational.*

## The Anniversary as a Tool of Domestic Politics

### Legitimizing the regime through military capability

The domestic political dimension of the June 25 tests should not be underestimated. In **North Korea**, **June 25** — anniversary of the outbreak of the **1950** war — is commemorated not as a tragedy or a military adventure that nearly destroyed the **Kim Il Sung** regime (saved only by **China's** intervention), but as the start of a resistance war against « American aggression ». This is the official narrative of a regime whose legitimacy rests largely on the posture of a besieged nation, heroically resisting more powerful enemies.

In this narrative framework, missile and artillery tests on the war anniversary are a celebration and a demonstration: see how powerful our defense is, see how vigilant our leader is. They serve to reinforce internal cohesion around **Kim Jong Un** in a difficult economic context — international sanctions have severely limited North Korean imports, and living conditions for the population remain precarious. Military successes are one of the few forms of national pride the regime can offer without risking comparison with **South Korea's** living standards.

### Kim Jong Un and succession: an unknown variable

**Kim Jong Un**, born around **1984** by most estimates, is approximately **42 years old**. He has led **North Korea** since **2011** — fifteen years of power with no apparent sign of internal instability. But the succession question — who will lead this country and its nuclear arsenals after him? — is a blind spot that preoccupies analysts. His sister **Kim Yo Jong** is considered the regime's second most powerful figure. His daughter, seen at his side during several military tests since **2022**, has been increasingly presented to the public — which some analysts interpret as preparation for dynastic succession.

This succession question is relevant to the analysis of military tests because it suggests the ongoing modernization program is not a personal policy of **Kim Jong Un** likely to change with his successor. It is an institutionalized state strategy, anchored in the **Korean Workers' Party** doctrine, that would likely survive any leadership change within the current regime framework. Nuclear **North Korea** is a permanent reality, not a contingent condition tied to one individual.

*Kim Jong Un's daughter at her father's side during military tests: this is a carefully constructed image for dynastic succession. The Kims have governed North Korea since 1945. This three-generation longevity in a modern state is a historical anomaly. And the fourth generation appears already in preparation. The North Korean nuclear question is structurally deeper than a question of leadership personality.*

## China: The Key Nobody Can Turn

### Beijing and the North Korean dilemma

It is impossible to analyze the North Korean question without discussing **China**. **Beijing** is the only actor with substantial influence over **Pyongyang** — it represents over **90%** of North Korean foreign trade and is the regime's primary oil supplier. In theory, if **Beijing** decided to fully exercise its economic leverage, it could force **North Korea** into significant nuclear concessions.

In practice, **China** does not do this. Not for lack of power, but from strategic calculation. A North Korean economic collapse would create a refugee influx at the Sino-Korean border that **Beijing** does not want to manage. A reunification of the peninsula under **Seoul's** leadership — a democracy allied with the **United States** — would place American troops at **China's** border, a prospect unacceptable to **Beijing**. And a nuclear **North Korea**, while destabilizing, also serves as a tool to distract American attention toward Northeast Asia rather than toward **Taiwan**.

### The consequences of the Russia-North Korea relationship on regional dynamics

The relationship between **Russia** and **North Korea** — formalized through deliveries of North Korean shells to the Russian army engaged in **Ukraine** and **Kim Jong Un's** visit to **Moscow** in **September 2023** — has significantly modified regional dynamics. It has provided **Pyongyang** with precious financial resources in a context of sanctions. It has possibly provided military technologies. And it has, symbolically, reinforced the North Korean sense of being part of an axis resisting « Western hegemony ».

This new trilateral relationship — **Russia-China-North Korea** — creates troubling synergies from **Seoul's**, **Tokyo's**, and **Washington's** perspectives. It is not formalized into an alliance in the classical sense, but it creates an environment where international sanctions are less effective (**Russia** and **China** are both permanent **Security Council** members and veto any tightening of sanctions), where informal technology transfers are possible, and where **Pyongyang** has a commercial network enabling circumvention of restrictions.

*China could solve the North Korean problem if it wanted to. It does not want to. That is a truth that Western diplomacy struggles to articulate publicly, because admitting it also means admitting that solutions based on Beijing's pressure are fundamentally limited. North Korea is a problem that will not resolve itself as long as China finds more advantages in maintaining it than in solving it.*

## The Implications for Regional Security

### Japan in the crosshairs

The **Japanese archipelago** is directly in the line of fire of North Korean military modernization. **Japan** is within range of many **Pyongyang** ballistic missiles, and recurring North Korean missile tests that fly over or pass above its airspace — though less frequent recently — have generated significant psychological trauma and political pressure to strengthen Japanese defenses. The Japanese prime minister has committed to a massive rearmament program, with a doubling of the defense budget to reach **2% of GDP** by **2027**, including acquisition of long-range counter-strike missiles.

These developments — Japanese rearmament, South Korean defense reinforcement, maintained American military presence on the peninsula — form a security triangle that **China** watches with growing suspicion. For **Beijing**, Japanese rearmament and the strengthening of the American-Korean alliance are consequences directly attributable to North Korean provocations — but they are also consequences that frustrate its own regional ambitions. There is a geopolitical irony here: **Kim Jong Un's** tests accelerate precisely the military developments of his neighbors that **China** seeks to contain.

### The Indo-Pacific as a theater of systemic competition

The June **25, 2026** tests must finally be read within the broader context of systemic competition in the **Indo-Pacific**. **North Korea** is not an isolated actor. It is an element of a security environment that includes **China's** ambitions over **Taiwan**, American military presence in **South Korea**, **Japan**, and **Guam**, the strengthening of regional alliances (**Quad**, **AUKUS**), and the mutual surveillance of actors who perceive their fundamental interests as incompatible. In this context, every North Korean provocation is a test not only of **Pyongyang's** technical capabilities, but also of the cohesion and resilience of America's security architecture in the region.

The question for **Washington** is not simply: how to respond to the June 25 tests? It is: how to maintain a credible deterrence architecture against a threat that is systematically modernizing, in a context where American attention is dispersed between **Ukraine**, **Iran**, **China**, and domestic challenges? Deterrence is only credible if it is perceived as such by the adversary. And **Pyongyang** regularly tests that credibility.

*The Indo-Pacific is becoming a theater of military and technological competition of an intensity that the post-Cold War decades never accustomed us to. North Korea is a second-tier actor in this competition — but its provocations constrain American attention and resources disproportionately to its size and economy. That may be its most valuable contribution to the global strategy of its circumstantial allies.*

## What the West Can Realistically Do

### The options to choose between

Facing North Korean military modernization, the options available to the **West** and its regional allies are limited and none is satisfactory. Sanctions are in place and partially effective — they keep **North Korea** under economic pressure — but they have not stopped the nuclear and missile program. Diplomatic dialogue has proven its limits during previous negotiation cycles. Direct military pressure risks escalation toward a conflict nobody wants. **China's** engagement on the question is structurally constrained.

What remains: strengthening deterrence, maintaining the credibility of alliance commitments, and investing in missile defenses and precision long-range strike capabilities that modify **Pyongyang's** cost-benefit calculation. **South Korea** is developing its own long-range missile capabilities, reducing its dependence on American systems. **Japan** is investing in counter-strike missiles. The **United States** is maintaining and reinforcing its regional presence.

### Accepting an uncomfortable reality

There is also an intellectual honesty required in recognizing an uncomfortable reality: **North Korea** is and will remain a nuclear state for the foreseeable future. The options for returning to a nuclear-free Korean peninsula — which were theoretically possible in the **1990s** — are no longer realistic today. The practical question is not denuclearizing **North Korea**. It is containing its capabilities, maintaining deterrence, preserving the security of **South Korea** and **Japan**, and preventing nuclear technology proliferation to other actors.

This is a policy of managing a bad situation, not resolving a problem. It is unsatisfying. It makes no good headlines. And it is probably the only realistic policy available. The June **25, 2026** tests do not change this fundamental reality. They simply remind us, with the regularity of a clock, that this reality does not disappear on its own.

*Saying North Korea will remain nuclear is politically incorrect in almost every Western capital. But I am not trying to get elected. I am analyzing a situation honestly. And the honest situation is this: Kim Jong Un will not dismantle his nuclear weapons. Realistic policy begins with accepting this reality, not denying it.*

## Ukraine and the Korean Lesson

### Two wars, a common dynamic

There is an instructive parallel between the Ukrainian situation and the Korean situation. In both cases, democracies face authoritarian neighbors with significant military capabilities and the will to use them. In both cases, Western powers provide military and economic support without direct engagement in the conflict. In both cases, the question of adequacy between security commitments and the means provided is at the heart of strategic debates.

The fundamental difference: **Ukraine** is at war now. **South Korea** is in a fragile peace maintained by deterrence. The June 25 tests serve as a reminder that this deterrence must be actively maintained — through investments in military capabilities, credible alliance commitments, and permanent vigilance. **Zelensky** would probably tell **Seoul**: do not assume that security guarantees are sufficient without the concrete means to enforce them. The cost of deterrence that fails is infinitely higher than the cost of maintaining it.

### Arsenals converging toward the same targets

The systems tested on **June 25, 2026** — precision MLRS, long-range howitzers, specialized warheads — are exactly the type of weapons that transformed the Ukrainian conflict. **HIMARS** changed the dynamic in **Ukraine**. **North Korea** is developing an equivalent. **Russia** has drawn lessons from its losses against precision artillery and is investing in countermeasures. **China** is observing all this, drawing its own conclusions about modern high-intensity warfare. We are in a period of global rearmament and accelerated military learning of which North Korean tests on June 25 are merely one symptom among others.

This reality — a world where multiple revanchist or autocratic powers simultaneously rearm, drawing lessons from ongoing conflicts, developing systems precisely designed to overcome Western defenses — is the fundamental strategic constraint of our era. Responding requires not only military investment but diplomatic coherence, alliance solidity, and clarity in commitments that democracies sometimes struggle to maintain over time. **June 25, 2026** is a reminder of this obligation.

*A North Korean precision MLRS, a Ukrainian Caesar, an American HIMARS: three systems sharing the same logic — long-range artillery, high precision, mobility. The war in Ukraine validated this logic at scale. Kim Jong Un draws the conclusions. The West should also draw conclusions — notably about the urgency of maintaining its own precision artillery capabilities at adequate levels.*

## Technology Transfers to Russia: The Unspoken Stakes of North Korean Tests

### Pyongyang and Moscow: a mutually profitable interests alliance

The June **25, 2026** weapons tests cannot be analyzed in isolation from the growing relationship between **Pyongyang** and **Moscow**. Since **2023**, **North Korea** has supplied **Russia** with millions of **152mm** and **122mm** artillery shells to fuel its war machine in **Ukraine**. In return, American, South Korean, and Ukrainian intelligence reports indicate that **Russia** has provided **North Korea** with advanced military technologies — particularly in the areas of precision guidance systems, ballistic missile engines, and potentially space propulsion subsystems. The autonomous precision guidance system tested on June 25 with the **240mm MLRS** could directly result from this technology transfer.

This dynamic of techno-military exchanges between two pariah regimes is one of the most dangerous and least discussed consequences of the war in **Ukraine**. By engaging in this partnership, **Russia** has helped create a technologically more capable **North Korea** — with repercussions that will extend well beyond the Korean peninsula for decades. This is a strategic debt that the **West** will have to manage, whose full cost is not yet visible.

### UN inspections: a paralyzed verification architecture

The **United Nations Panel of Experts** on **North Korea** — which was tracking North Korean arms transfers to **Russia** and **Ukraine** — was dissolved in March **2024** after Russia's veto at the **Security Council** on renewal of its mandate. This dissolution is not a bureaucratic detail — it is the deliberate elimination of the independent verification mechanism that documented North Korean sanctions violations by **Russia**. Without this expert group, the international community navigates blind on actual arms flows between **Pyongyang** and **Moscow**. The June 25 tests are visible — but what happens in warehouses and freight rail between the two countries remains largely in the dark.

This UN institutional paralysis is one of **Putin's** major strategic victories in managing the North Korean file. By destroying the monitoring mechanism, he created an operational space for technology exchange with **Kim Jong Un** that can no longer be independently documented. The **West** must develop alternative monitoring mechanisms — satellite intelligence, exchanges between allied services, analysis of commercial data — to fill this verification void.

*The dissolution of the UN expert group on North Korea by Russian veto is a maneuver that I consider, technically, an act of complicity in arms proliferation. That is an opinion, not a legal fact. But when a permanent Security Council member deliberately destroys an arms transfer monitoring mechanism to protect its own violations, it is hard to call it anything else. Russia has chosen Kim Jong Un as a strategic partner. We will all pay the price.*

## The Allied Response: Joint Exercises and New Deterrence Doctrines

### Freedom Shield exercises and their evolutions

Facing accelerated modernization of the North Korean arsenal, American-South Korean allies have considerably intensified their joint exercises since **2023**. The annual **Freedom Shield** exercise, bringing together tens of thousands of American and South Korean soldiers, has been expanded to integrate response scenarios to improved ballistic missiles, long-range MLRS, and new North Korean naval platforms. Simultaneously, American-Japanese-South Korean trilateral exercises have multiplied, reflecting the recognition that any conflagration on the Korean peninsula necessarily involves **Japan** — where major American forces are based and whose territorial waters are within range of North Korean missiles.

These exercises fulfill two simultaneous functions: they maintain the operational readiness of allied forces, and they send a political signal to **Pyongyang** (and **Beijing**) that any North Korean military aggression would face a coordinated and prepared response. But there is a limit to what exercises can accomplish without a corresponding modernization of allied capabilities — particularly in the areas of missile defense and long-range precision strike that **Seoul** has now incorporated into its response doctrine.

### The Kill Chain doctrine: countering before launch

**South Korea** has officially adopted its so-called **Kill Chain** doctrine — a system of detection and pre-emptive neutralization of North Korean missiles before their launch. This doctrine, which involves pre-emptive strikes on North Korean launchers and command sites when imminent attack is detected, is legally and politically controversial but militarily logical facing an adversary developing missiles of increasing range and precision guides. The June 25 tests with autonomous guidance systems considerably complicate the **Kill Chain**: mobile launchers with autonomous guidance are much harder to pre-emptively target than fixed installations.

The evolution of deterrence doctrine on the Korean peninsula is therefore in real time a technological race between North Korean offensive capabilities and South Korean and American defensive/pre-emptive capabilities. Every North Korean test is an update of the parameters of this race. Every guidance system improvement, every range increase, every new delivery vehicle modifies the strategic calculations of military planners in **Seoul**, **Tokyo**, and **Washington**. We are witnessing, in real time, the evolution of a war doctrine that could one day be put into practice with apocalyptic consequences.

*I analyze this military data with deliberate intellectual detachment. But sometimes, when I list the ranges, the precisions, the payloads of North Korea's new systems, the reality of what all this means for millions of people living within range of these weapons strikes differently. These are not numbers in a spreadsheet. They are mass destruction capabilities deliberately developed by a regime that recognizes no moral limits. The lucidity of analysis must not extinguish the ethical horror of what we are analyzing.*

## Conclusion: Analyze Without Panic, Alert Without Resignation

### What June 25, 2026 tells us

The June **25, 2026** tests do not represent a sudden turn in North Korean military policy. They fit within a coherent, systematic, and deliberately provocative modernization trajectory. **Kim Jong Un** chose the date — the anniversary of the **1950** war's outbreak — with precision. He personally supervised the tests; the images are broadcast on state media. The message is clear: **North Korea** is modernizing, it remembers history, and it wants its adversaries to take note.

### Vigilance as the only durable response

The adequate response to this reality is not panic or resignation. It is lasting strategic vigilance — maintaining alliances, strengthening defenses, maintaining credible deterrence — combined with honesty about the limits of what is diplomatically achievable with a regime whose survival depends on its nuclear arsenal. The June 25 tests do not change the fundamental equation. They remind us of it. And in the field of international security, short memory is the greatest danger.

*I have been analyzing North Korean military behavior for years. The pattern is always the same: provocations timed for political effect, weapons tests calibrated to send messages, and a regime that has mastered the art of extracting concessions from the international community through controlled escalation. June 25 was another chapter in that playbook. The appropriate response is not alarm — it is sustained, clear-eyed vigilance. Kim is predictable precisely because he is rational. And that rationality is what deterrence must address.*

**By Maxime Marquette, columnist**

## Columnist's transparency note

### Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a **columnist and analyst**. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. **I claim analytical clarity**, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

### Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between **verified facts and interpretive analysis**. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under **Sources**, never here.

**Primary source families** used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

**Secondary source families**: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under **Sources**.

### Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a **critical, contextual synthesis** based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.

## Sources

### Primary sources

- [Yonhap — N. Korea's Kim oversees tests of key weapons seen as aimed at S. Korea — June 26, 2026](https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20260626001700315)

- [Al Jazeera — North Korea conducts major weapons tests; South training drone warriors — June 26, 2026](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/6/26/north-korea-conducts-major-weapons-tests-south-training-drone-warriors)

- [Institute for the Study of War (ISW) — Korean Peninsula Update, June 2, 2026 — June 2, 2026](https://understandingwar.org/research/china-taiwan/korean-peninsula-update-june-2-2026/)

- [Yonhap — N. Korea test-fires large-caliber multiple rocket launcher with Kim in attendance — January 28, 2026](https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20260128000700315)

### Secondary sources

- [Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation — North Korea Missile Launch Activity — 2026](https://armscontrolcenter.org/fact-sheet-north-korea-missile-test-activity/)

- [Military Times — Coverage of military developments in North Korea — 2026](https://www.militarytimes.com/)

- [19FortyFive — Analysis of North Korean military capabilities — 2026](https://www.19fortyfive.com/)

- [Foreign Policy — Analysis of Indo-Pacific security and North Korea — 2026](https://foreignpolicy.com/)

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Source: Maxime Marquette, MadMax. When citing, name the author and link https://mad-max.co/en/article/analyse-kim-jong-un-teste-ses-missiles-le-jour-du-76e-anniversaire-de-la-guerre