Which country launched the Hwasong-12 mid-range ballistic missile ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (3), North Korea. The Hwasong-12 is a North Korean ballistic missile, developed and operated by the Korean People's Army Strategic Force. The name itself is the clue a prepared candidate uses: Hwasong is the Korean word for Mars, and North Korea designates its ballistic missile family by that name with a type number, so the full designation of this weapon translates as Mars type 12. Once the naming convention is known, the question answers itself, because no other country in the region uses it. Technically the Hwasong-12 is a single-stage, liquid-fuelled intermediate-range ballistic missile, with an estimated range of between about three thousand seven hundred and six thousand kilometres; its engine is understood to derive from Russian RD-250 technology. The range classification matters and is the detail most often got wrong: an intermediate-range missile is not an intercontinental one, and the Hwasong-12 should be kept distinct from the Hwasong-14 and the later members of the series, which are intercontinental ballistic missiles. The weapon first flew successfully in May 2017 and was tested again in August and September of that year. It then reappeared in the news in the period this paper draws on. On 30 January 2022 North Korea launched a Hwasong-12 on a lofted trajectory — that is, fired steeply upward rather than out to its full range, so as to demonstrate capability without overflying another country — reaching an apogee of about two thousand kilometres and coming down some eight hundred kilometres away in the Sea of Japan. North Korean state media described the launch as an evaluation of the quality of serially produced Hwasong-12 missiles, which implied that the type had moved from development into manufacture, and the test was widely reported as the country's longest-range launch since 2017. That is why an examination written in August 2022 asks about it: the launch fell squarely within the window of current affairs the paper draws on, and it was reported in every Indian newspaper. The answer to be marked is option (3).

Why the other options are wrong — (a) China is not the operator of the Hwasong-12, and its own missiles carry entirely different designations. The Chinese ballistic missile family is the Dongfeng series, the name meaning East Wind, with type numbers attached in the same way — the DF-21, the DF-26 and the DF-41 are the members most often named in reporting — and its submarine-launched missiles belong to the Julang series. Knowing that much is enough to eliminate this option without knowing anything about the Hwasong-12 itself, and the general point is worth generalising: most missile questions in a current affairs paper can be answered from the naming convention alone, because states name their weapons systematically and the names are distinctive. China's relevance to the Korean question is diplomatic rather than technical — it is North Korea's principal economic partner and its position on the United Nations Security Council shapes what sanctions can be imposed — but that relationship does not make Chinese any of the systems North Korea tests.  (b) Japan is on the receiving end of this story rather than its author. The Hwasong-12 launch of 30 January 2022 came down in the Sea of Japan, some eight hundred kilometres from its launch point, and North Korean missile tests are a standing security concern for Japan for the plain geographical reason that the sea between the two countries is narrow relative to the ranges involved. Japan's own defence posture has been shaped since 1947 by Article 9 of its Constitution, under which the Japanese people renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes; its forces are constituted as Self-Defense Forces, and it has not developed a strategic ballistic missile force of the kind the Hwasong series belongs to. Its response to North Korean launches has been in missile defence, in intelligence sharing with the United States and South Korea, and in diplomacy — not in a competing programme of its own.  (d) South Korea is the most tempting of the three wrong options, for the obvious reason that a candidate who recognises Hwasong as a Korean word but does not know which Korea uses it has a one-in-two chance and no way to improve it. The discriminator is the naming convention: Hwasong is the designation used by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north for its ballistic missiles, and the series runs from the short-range types derived from the Soviet Scud through this intermediate-range weapon to the intercontinental Hwasong-14 and its successors. South Korea, in the south, is the country these missiles are aimed to deter or threaten, and it operates within a very different framework — an alliance with the United States, forces stationed on its territory, and a missile programme constrained for decades by agreements with Washington. When a question turns on which of two similarly named states is meant, the safest route is through the specific name in the stem rather than through general impressions about the region.

Concept: North Korea's ballistic missile programme is organised around a family of weapons designated Hwasong, the Korean word for Mars, with a type number appended; the family runs from short-range systems derived from the Soviet Scud through medium and intermediate types to intercontinental missiles. The Hwasong-12 is the intermediate-range member most often in the news: a single-stage, liquid-fuelled missile with an estimated range of roughly three thousand seven hundred to six thousand kilometres, operated by the Korean People's Army Strategic Force, its engine understood to derive from Russian RD-250 technology. It flew successfully for the first time in May 2017 and was tested again in August and September of that year, and it returned to the news on 30 January 2022 with a launch on a lofted trajectory that reached an apogee of about two thousand kilometres and travelled some eight hundred kilometres into the Sea of Japan; North Korean state media presented it as a check on the quality of serially produced missiles. The vocabulary that surrounds these events is examinable in itself. Ballistic missiles are classified by range — short-range up to about a thousand kilometres, medium-range to about three thousand, intermediate-range to about five and a half thousand, and intercontinental beyond that — and the Hwasong-12 sits in the intermediate band while the Hwasong-14 and later types are intercontinental. A lofted trajectory is a launch fired unusually steeply, so that the missile reaches a very high apogee and falls a short distance away; it allows a state to demonstrate the energy of a system without flying it over another country's territory, and North Korea uses it routinely. The wider context is the international effort to constrain the programme through United Nations Security Council resolutions and sanctions, and the repeated failure of negotiations to halt it.

State PCS 2022 Q75 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2022 Q75 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer