North Korea says new ICBM was success, can reach all of US mainland

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A pedestrian walks in front of a television screen displaying file news footage of a North Korean missile launch, in Tokyo on November 29, 2017

Kim’s administration also said that it had “realized great historic cause of completing state nuclear force,” South Korean news outlet Yonhap News reported.

Ahead of Wednesday’s statement, many experts said the latest ICBM was capable of reaching the U.S. if it had flown on a flatter trajectory. But even if the Hwasong-15 is able to enter U.S. airspace, that doesn’t mean Pyongyang is capable of striking the world’s largest economy with a nuclear weapon.

“We don’t know what payload it carries so it’s not clear it can carry a nuclear warhead to that range,” David Wright, co-director of the global security program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit advocacy group, told CNBC.

“The real question is: how small North Korea has made a nuclear warhead and whether it can carry a warhead like that on the missiles it makes.”