AFP: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, accompanied by his daughter, personally oversaw the recent test-firing of the country’s most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile, state media images showed yesterday.
The launch on Thursday — Pyongyang’s second ICBM test this year — involved a Hwasong-17 missile, the official Korean Central News Agency reported, adding that it was fired in response to “frantic” US-South Korea joint military drills.
Photographs in the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper showed Kim watching the black-and-white Hwasong-17 — dubbed a “monster missile” by analysts — blast off into the sky. Some of the images showed him watching the launch with his daughter — never named by state media but identified as his second child Ju Ae by South Korean intelligence.
State media also released images showing the Earth from space, purportedly taken by a camera mounted on the ICBM.