North Korea had carried out 16 ballistic missile launches through October 12, 2026, compared with six in all of 2025 and 12 in 2024, according to a tracking analysis published by The Korea Times on October 24 and updated October 26. Pyongyang also conducted cruise missile tests on seven separate occasions through October 14, including a claimed submarine-launched test that outside analysts have not independently confirmed.
A disputed submarine launch
On October 14, North Korea’s state news agency, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), said the country test-fired two types of submarine-launched strategic cruise missiles into the sea off its east coast, Al Jazeera reported. KCNA said the tests were meant to examine the reliability of “war deterrents” and improve the navy’s skill in strategic missions, and that senior military officers observed them. One of the two missile types, the Pulhwasal-3-31, was the same system KCNA said had been fired from land the previous week.
That claim comes with a significant caveat: the launch platform has not been independently confirmed. North Korea is not believed to have a modern missile submarine in full operation, and outside reporting on the October 14 test notes that whether the missiles were genuinely fired from underwater, rather than a submerged barge or other platform, remains unverified. Kim Jong Un has made naval missile capability a stated military priority, but the gap between North Korea’s stated capability and its confirmed capability is exactly the kind of claim that deserves skepticism rather than repetition as fact.
A heavier, faster-firing arsenal
The October 12 test drew particular attention from analysts. North Korea fired a Hwasong-11 Da-2.5 missile that Shin Jong-woo of the Korea Defense and Security Forum assessed as carrying a roughly 2.5-metric-ton warhead over a distance of nearly 1,000 kilometers. Shin said the test demonstrated Pyongyang’s ability to deliver a heavy warhead across that range, which would put most of South Korea and parts of Japan within reach of a single missile type.
An earlier test on October 3, described by North Korea as a hypersonic intermediate-range missile, produced conflicting distance estimates: North Korea claimed a flight of about 1,000 kilometers, South Korea’s military estimated more than 700 kilometers, and Japan’s defense ministry put the figure at roughly 680 kilometers. None of the three figures has been reconciled publicly, and the discrepancy underscores how much of the reporting on these tests rests on competing estimates rather than confirmed telemetry.
Older claims carry the same problem. After an April 19 test of Hwasong-11 Ra missiles, North Korea said five missiles struck a target area spanning 12.5 to 13 hectares — a claim The Korea Times’ analysis notes has not been independently verified by outside governments or analysts.
The Russia connection analysts are watching
Yang Uk of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies told The Korea Times that “North Korea has significantly improved their accuracy using data obtained from the war in Ukraine,” a reference to North Korean troops and munitions deployed in support of Russia’s invasion. Yang was careful to bound that assessment, however, saying North Korea remains nowhere near able to reliably strike the U.S. mainland. Separately, Kwak Jin-o of Pai Chai University cautioned against overreading a single year of tests, saying it is “asking too much” to expect North Korea to have perfected its missile systems from one war’s worth of data, and that claims about flight distance and in-flight maneuvering remain unverified.
Hong Min of the Korea Institute for National Unification offered a different read, saying the string of hypersonic-related tests this year points to “an entire family of systems” rather than isolated prototypes.
Why South Korea is worried about more than any single missile
The October 12 launch came four days after South Korea’s own hypersonic glide vehicle test on October 8, a system South Korean officials describe as still under development; at least one outlet reported the North Korean launch as a reaction to that test, though neither government has confirmed a direct causal link. Whatever the connection between those two events, analysts say the deeper problem for Seoul’s defense planners is not any one North Korean missile but the combination of launch methods now in play. Tests this year have come from fixed land sites, mobile launchers, the destroyers Choe Hyon and Kang Kon, and the disputed October 14 submarine test, giving North Korea more ways to approach a target simultaneously.
Shin Jong-woo warned that a coordinated attack combining ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, rockets and drones could overwhelm South Korea’s air defenses if fired together rather than individually. Hong Min called for better low-altitude surveillance and tighter information-sharing among South Korea, the United States and Japan to track the wider range of threats. Neither analyst offered a timeline for when such a combined attack might be attempted, and both were describing a risk, not an imminent event.
What is not in dispute is the pace. Whatever the true performance of any individual missile, North Korea has tested more of them, more often, and from more platforms in 2026 than in the previous two years combined — a trend with no public sign of slowing as the year closes out.
Sources
- The Korea Times, “North Korea’s diversifying missile arsenal complicates South’s defense” — https://koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/defense/20261024/north-koreas-diversifying-missile-arsenal-complicates-souths-defense
- Al Jazeera, “North Korea tests two submarine-launched missiles, state media reports” — https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/15/north-korea-tests-two-submarine-launched-missiles-state-media-reports
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