After latest rocket test, North Korea claims it can lob nukes at the US

A test firing of a rocket engine North Korea claims will power an ICBM, in a state media photo.

On Saturday, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's state-run Korean Central News Agency reported that the North Korean government had conducted a ground test of a new rocket engine intended to power the first stage of an intercontinental ballistic missile. The test, which took place at Sohae Space Center in North Phyongan Province near the Chinese border, was hailed as a success.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un boasted that the engine would make it possible to launch nuclear strikes against the US. "Now the DPRK can tip new type inter-continental ballistic rockets with more powerful nuclear warheads and keep any cesspool of evils in the earth including the US mainland within our striking range and reduce them to ashes,” Kim was quoted as saying, according to North Korea watchdog site NK News.

Photos of the test published by KCNA don't reveal whether it was a liquid or solid-fuel rocket engine being tested. Late in March, North Korea performed a ground test of a solid-fuel rocket that may have been for an upper stage of the KN-08, also known as the Hwasong-13 (and previously referred to as the No-dong-C)—a road-mobile ICBM that North Korea has been reportedly developing since at least 2011. And on March 9, North Korea's government announced that it had successfully completed the "standardized" design for a miniaturized nuclear weapon to be carried by ballistic missiles.