North Korea Practices Combined Fire Under One Control System

North Korea said five army units fired drones, cruise missiles, rockets and ballistic missiles together in a Saturday live-fire drill. The official Korean Central News Agency, reporting on September 14, called the event a joint firepower attack drill and said every round hit.

Marshal Pak Jong Chon and Maj. Gen. Yu Chang Son were on the range to practice an integrated firepower control system, a piece of what KCNA called a strategic weapons combined management system. Kim Jong Un did not attend.

Five Units Fired Under One Control System

KCNA said subunits picked from five artillery and missile joint units of the Korean People’s Army took part on September 12. The report listed new combat systems used in the same drill: attack drones of various kinds, a tactical cruise missile, a large-caliber thermal-pressure multiple rocket launcher, and a tactical ballistic missile.

Pak, a marshal and vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea, said the drill was aimed at making the army do what it should do. Yu, director of the Artillery Bureau of the KPA General Staff, treated the morning as training for combined fire, not a rollout of one new missile.

THE TRAINING TASKS YU NAMED

• Fire-control procedures: Troops were to get familiar with the integrated firepower control system, described as a systematic component of the strategic weapons combined management system.
• Automatic control: The army was to improve the specialty of integrated automatic firepower control across different combat systems.
• Concentrated fire: The third task was to raise the efficiency of destroying targets with concentrated fire.

Yu added that drills of this kind help striking units improve their strategic counteraction posture and give sub-units faster reaction skills in an emergency. KCNA said all strike weapon systems showed “the huge destructive power of concentration fire” by hitting targets with 100 percent hit accuracy at a stroke, “ensuring the unity and simultaneity of firepower attack.” Those hit figures come from the agency alone.

What Seoul Tracked From Wonsan at Dawn

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff detected multiple short-range ballistic missiles from the Wonsan area at about 5:20 a.m. on September 12. The rounds flew about 250 kilometers (155 miles) into the East Sea, and Seoul said it was analyzing the exact types with the United States.

South Korean and U.S. intelligence services tracked the movement from the early stages and shared the ballistic missile information with Japan, the Joint Chiefs said. The South Korean military said it was holding a firm South Korea-U.S. defense posture and keeping the means to respond to any provocation. U.S. Pacific Command said it was aware of the launches and was consulting allies and partners.

South Korea’s presidential National Security Office called an emergency meeting with the defense ministry and the Joint Chiefs after the flights. The presidential office condemned the ballistic missile launches as a serious violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions, which include a 2006 demand that North Korea not conduct any further ballistic missile launch, and told Pyongyang to stop.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The clock: The Joint Chiefs timed the Wonsan launches at about 5:20 a.m. on September 12.
• The distance: The missiles flew about 250 kilometers before they came down in the East Sea.
• The units: KCNA said subunits from five artillery and missile joint units took part.
• The chair: Kim Jong Un did not attend; Pak and Yu guided the drill.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The hits: The 100 percent accuracy claim has not been checked by an outside radar picture.
• The variants: South Korean military sources said the mix looked like Hwasong-11 series missiles and 600-millimeter multiple rocket launcher rounds, fired in successive order; KCNA did not use those names.
• The drones and cruise legs: Seoul’s public statement confirmed ballistic missiles. It did not independently describe the drone and cruise shots KCNA put in the same drill.

Independent checks of North Korean weapons claims are hard on a closed range, and Saturday’s writeup left that gap in place.

250 Kilometers Fits a South Korea Strike

The rounds were fired east into North Korean waters, not south across the border. A 250-kilometer flight from the east coast is still the range class used against targets in South Korea, which is why Seoul treats these salvos as a peninsula problem rather than a show over empty sea.

THE MIX PYONGYANG NAMED AND SEOUL ASSESSED

The 600-millimeter rocket is catalogued in the West as the KN-25, a road-mobile round that blurs the line between a big artillery rocket and a short-range ballistic missile. CSIS Missile Threat lists it with a demonstrated range of 380 km, which covers the 250-kilometer flights Seoul measured and still leaves room to reach deeper into the South if the aiming point were reversed.

South Korean tallies put Saturday’s firing as the 13th ballistic missile launch event of 2026. It was also the first public ballistic missile launch since August 20, when North Korea fired about 10 short-range ballistic missiles during the scaled-back Ulchi Freedom Shield games.

The Salvo Came a Day After Freedom Edge

The timing sat on the allied calendar, not on a random range day. South Korea, the United States and Japan had just closed Freedom Edge, a five-day air, naval and cyber drill in international waters east and south of Jeju Island.

North Korean Defense Minister Kim Song-gi had already denounced that trilateral run as a provocative multi-domain exercise. He said that if the United States and its allies attempted a new military confrontation, the DPRK would take “strong and reflective countermeasures from the standpoint of power.”

THE CALENDAR AROUND THE SALVO

1. August 16, 2026: President Donald Trump orders the Pentagon to substantially reduce joint military exercises with South Korea, calling the drills costly and “totally inappropriate and hostile.”
2. August 20, 2026: North Korea fires about 10 short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea while Ulchi Freedom Shield is still under way.
3. August 21, 2026: The allies end Ulchi Freedom Shield, cutting it from 11 days to five and stopping six days earlier than the original August 27 close.
4. September 7, 2026: Freedom Edge opens on schedule. Kim Song-gi warns of countermeasures the same day.
5. September 11, 2026: Freedom Edge ends in the waters off Jeju.
6. September 12, 2026: The Wonsan live-fire drill begins before dawn.
7. September 14, 2026: KCNA reports the drill to foreign readers. The party paper Rodong Sinmun does not carry it.

Freedom Edge went ahead even after Trump shortened the bilateral autumn games. Rear Adm. Kim Ji-hoon, director of exercises and training for South Korea’s Joint Chiefs, had called the trilateral run a drill that strengthens deterrence against North Korean nuclear and missile threats.

Kim Stayed Away and KCNA Waited

North Korea usually tells the missile story the next morning. This account arrived two days later, and only on KCNA, which is built for readers outside the country. Rodong Sinmun, the paper that talks to the domestic party audience, stayed silent.

Kim’s empty chair fits that quieter packaging. A leader-level nuclear spectacle would have been harder to walk back if talks with Washington were still a live option. A marshal and an artillery chief on the range reads as a technical job.

It is one of the training tasks prioritized by the army to get familiar with the procedure for the operation of the integrated firepower control system, the systematic component of the strategic weapons combined management system, improve the specialty of the integrated automatic firepower control of various combat systems and increase the efficiency of destroying the targets with concentrated fire.

Yu Chang Son, director of the Artillery Bureau, KCNA, September 14, 2026

Yu also said the joint concentrated fire of major missile subunits and long-range artillery subunits would boost militant morale and “improve the level of specialization to bring down the enemy’s armed forces organizationally and structurally once an order is issued.” He said the army would keep mastering counterattack procedures through practical drills.

Shortening Ulchi Freedom Shield Did Not Buy Restraint

Trump ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to cut the annual South Korea games after saying he had a very good relationship with Kim. He wrote that North Korea had been “unthreatening and respectful” while he has been president, and that the exercises sent the wrong signal. He also tied the order to Seoul’s refusal to join him on Iran.

The Pentagon halved the 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield plan, converted some live-fire work to simulations, and cancelled the counteroffensive phase. Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un’s sister, said shortening the drill did not change its “provocative, aggressive nature.”

North Korea then fired about 10 short-range ballistic missiles on August 20, while the reduced games were still running. Saturday’s Wonsan drill was the next public ballistic shot after that barrage, and it came the morning after Freedom Edge, the trilateral piece Trump had not cut.

Kim said earlier this year that he could return to talks if the United States drops what he calls a hostile policy and respects the North’s status as a nuclear state. The fire-control drill does not close that door by itself. It does show that Pyongyang will keep practicing massed fires against the South while that argument runs.

A Command Net for Rockets, Missiles and Drones

Hong Min, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said the exercise mattered for the way it coordinated different strategic and tactical strike systems and employed them at the same time. He noted that Pyongyang had previously described a nuclear weapons combined management system, sometimes called the nuclear trigger, and said the newer “strategic weapons combined management system” phrasing could mean the command net is being widened to cover nuclear and non-nuclear strike arms together.

Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies in Seoul, said North Korea was showing it can run drones, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and rocket artillery through one command-and-control system. Kim’s absence and the delayed KCNA-only report, in that reading, kept the event in the technical column and left some room for later talks.

A combined raid of that kind is a different problem for South Korean and U.S. missile defenses than a single ballistic track. Operators would have to sort rockets, cruise missiles, drones and ballistic missiles on different paths at once, then decide which tracks threaten bases, airfields or command posts. Saturday did not prove that the network works at wartime scale. It did show the army wants troops fluent in the procedure before an order comes.

Legal scholars have long treated North Korean ballistic launches as internationally wrongful acts under Council resolutions adopted after the 2006 nuclear test. Seoul said so again on Saturday. Yu, for his part, already told the troops what comes next. They will keep drilling the counterattack, he said, until the army can collapse the other side’s armed forces as an organization, not just punch a hole in a range target.

Kim never came to watch.