<p >July 4, 2025, marks eight years since North Korea first demonstrated the ability to launch nuclear strikes against the United States mainland with the successful test of the new Hwasong-14 ballistic missile. In what would prove to be a pivotal moment in the East Asian state’s seven decades long conflict with the United States, the test was the first of three that year demonstrating an effective intercontinental range strike capability, which experts would consider key to pressing the United States to come to the negotiating table in 2018 and significantly revise its objectives for its conflict with Pyongyang. Commenting on the significance of the intercontinental range ballistic missile tests that year, leading expert on the conflict between the Untied States and North Korea, A. B. Abrams, recently observed that these had “changed the entire structure of the world.” These were the words Abrams quoted from Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Commander of the U.S. Strategic Command John Hyten, who himself stressed the pivotal significance of North Korea’s achievement during an assessment in early 2020.</p><p ><img src="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/m/articles/2025/07/05/article_686871b8bff3d7_09924325.jpg" title="North Korean Hwasong-14 ICBM on Parade (KCNA)"></p><p >Abrams was among many analysts to observe that North Korea’s ability to launch nuclear strikes across the United States was a game changer, particularly as figures in the American leadership had repeatedly <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/08/lindsey-graham-north-korea/535578/" target="_blank">made clear </a>that starting a regional war in East Asia to destroy the country’s nuclear and missile programs, or even end its very existence, could be acceptable prices to pay to prevent it from obtaining such a capability. By placing American cities in the crosshairs, attacks on the country became far less viable, with Abrams noting in his recent book Surviving the Unipolar Era: North Korea's 35 Year Standoff with the United States:</p><p >“Where the United States had from 1950 demonstrated the ability to firebomb Korean cities from end to end with nuclear-capable strategic bombers, the introduction of genuine mutual vulnerability between the population centres of the U.S. and DPRK ensured that American cities would be firmly in the line of fire for nuclear strikes if a similar mass targeting of Korean civilians reoccurred. While the Soviet Union and China had previously gained intercontinental range nuclear strike capabilities, the former in 1949 using bombers and ten years later with the R-7 ICBM, and the latter in 1981 with the DF-5 ICBM, 2017 represented the first time a medium or small state gained the power to effectively deter a superpower at such a peer level without relying on the nuclear umbrella of a superpower sponsor. This historically unprecedented achievement was later referred to by Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and former Commander of the U.S. Strategic Command John Hyten as having “changed the entire structure of the world.”</p><p ><img src="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/m/articles/2025/07/05/article_6868726da3ad68_30193924.jpg" title="President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un During 2018 Summit Meeting"></p><p >The Hwasong-14’s second successful flight test was launched on July 28, and 11 days later on August 8 the Washington Post published part of a leaked Defense Intelligence Agency assessment confirming that the country was thought to be able to launch nuclear strikes against American cities with miniaturised nuclear warheads. “U.S. intelligence specifically confirmed to the press that North Korea was thought to have developed a viable re-entry vehicle for its ICBMs, which was one of the greatest challenges common to both intermediate and intercontinental range missile development due to the immense temperatures endured when re-entering the atmosphere at extreme speeds,” Abrams noted. “Confidence in North Korea’s development of re-entry vehicles had been in- creased by the release of images in 2016 showing a static test of an ablative carbon-composite tip for such a vehicle, in which a rocket engine simulated the heat of the re-entry environment. The&nbsp;Chemical Materials Institute in Hamhung, which produced carbon composite components, was thought to be responsible.</p><p ><img src="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/m/articles/2025/07/05/article_6868744c484672_33950025.jpg" title="Postage Stamp Commemorating Hwasong-14 Launch"></p><p >Modern advances in materials science such as carbon-composite materials had made reentry vehicles much easier to develop than in the Cold War era. Widespread hopes in the Western world for North Korea’s elimination as a state, and its westernisation and absorption into the U.S.-aligned south, were set back considerably by the events of 2017, with military options against the country having effectively disappeared from prevailing discourse. The country would continue to significantly improve its missile deterrent in the following years, most recently with test launches of the Hwasong-17 <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/first-look-at-north-korea-s-new-hwasong-17-icbm-launch-built-to-deliver-nuclear-strikes-to-cities-across-america" >from March 2022</a>, and the solid fuelled Hwasong-18&nbsp;<a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/hwasong18-short-notice-nkorea-solid-fuel-icbm" >from April 2023</a>, and the larger solid fuelled Hwasong-19 <a href="https://militarywatchmagazine.com/article/hwasong19-nkorea-new-threats-mainland" >from October 2024</a>. The country in September 2021 also began to test launch hypersonic glide vehicles, which are considered near impossible to intercept. Its demonstration of strength in 2017 paved the way not only to negotiate a relaxation of American economic pressure in 2017, as Washington ceased to pursue sanctions enforcement as vigorously, but also secured the country allowing it to project power into other theatres, most recently with the deployment of ground forces and mass export of armaments to support the Russian war effort against Ukraine and its NATO supporters.</p>