As if you could provide anything to begin with, let alone for counter points I made when bold assertions are made involving NK.
There is a plethora of well-researched literature and intelligence publications documenting the expertise provided by the Soviet Union, Russia, and China to various military and nuclear programs in countries such as Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan. I have always been surprised by the few occasions on here (of all places) where users asserted that the notion of outside help was simply unfathomable.
I am not at all surprised by occurrence of such disingenuously phrased narrative in which it is asserted what has not happened and if its not in bad faith then it is consequence of person making such claim about someone directly or indirectly has bad reading comprehension as it is not stated that North Korea had none outside assistance at all, asserting otherwise would be a blatant lie.
The Hwasong-17 is likely based on the reverse engineering components (like the RD-250) they stole from Ukraine.
RD-250 does not have single nozzle de-rated variant as in Hwasong-12 IRBM and Hwasong-14 ICBM nor where nozzles are gimballed such as with Hwasong-15 along Hwasong-17 and Chollima-1 space launch vehicle that have two Paektusan liquid fuel rocket engines.
North Korea might have stole RD-250 from Ukraine or Russia, but there is no hard evidence thus for all we know they based in RD-250 by solely analyzing form and deduce function from available images, perhaps even visited museum for example to take photos of.
The truck is Chinese, or at the very least a reverse engineered example derived from vehicles that were sold to North Korea for logging.
Just from this sentence you demonstrate that you are not uninformed on subject of North Korea yet still choose to comment on it.
Those trucks from China that were imported were for logging to carry lumber, they had no mechanism any sort on them for role of being transporter erector launcher besides being large and heavy with capacity to carry perhaps around 100 tons of weight on them.
North Korea had to on their own develop and manufacture components to turn them into transporter erector launcher vehicles while few years after produced clones that have one or two pairs more road wheels for Hwasong-15(later 18) and Hwasong-17 ICBM's.
Of course there were people spreading doubt and uncertainty about North Korea producing such large vehicles by stating they only ever shown 6 of them until they were 8 then 8 must have been imported until they finally learned to be quiet once 12 were shown with all of them being largest type that had 11 pairs of wheels and were transporter erector launchers for Hwasong-17 road mobile ICBM.
NK started with Scuds, which used UDMH. Then came the Nodong and very inefficient Taepodong, and basically very little happened from then until the last decade, when all these modern-looking ICBMs and Yars look-alikes started rolling out.
en.wikipedia.org
Except SCUD's do not use UDHM nor N2O4 and former started being used in North Korea with Hwasong-7 aka Nodong/Rodong.
Taepodong just as Nodong is South Korean and American label, former is for Paektusan space launch vehicle that is purely from political narrative by those two countries was that SLV labeled as ballistic missiles when years later Iran imported SLV technology from North Korea and was able to launch a satellite into low earth orbit with it. Successor to Paektusan was Unha series that were also labelled as ballistic missiles of intercontinental type until North Korea managed to insert their first satellite into low earth orbit.
Farce involving both North Korean SLV's was over with Hwasong-14 that is an actual ICBM by design and soon after Hwasong-15.
After that SLV such as Chollima-1 are not being labelled as ICBM by none of countries that did so for previous SLV's made by NK.
North Korea certainly had external help with Scud developments, mainly from Egypt.
Egypt had no capacity to maintain R-17's and let alone manufacture them, they provided them to North Korea as gesture of gratitude after latter assisted former during Yom Kimpur war by sending their own MiG-21's fighter jets and pilots. Consequently North Korea reverse engineered R-17's and got contract to maintain those that Egypt had along export clones of such to them since America was not willing to provide replacement for R-17's because of pressure from Israel only for partially resulting in world that we have today.
From what I remember Syria provided 9K79 / OTR-21 Tochka examples to North Korea in 1990's and 9M133 Kornet in early 2000's to North Korea allegedly for reverse engineering by later thus for former to have cheaper maintenance along affordable clones of them.
I believe they also collaborate with Iran, but as far as I'm aware there are no known cases of collaboration with Russia or China, although I expect the former has changed since February of 2022, but that is far too late to explain North Korean missile developments in the late 2010s.
America asserted North Korea was exporting artillery shells to Russia in September of 2022 yet first hard evidence of such only came one year later thus when that assertion was made is probably when first discussion/negotiations of arms trade deal might have happened while it was Ukraine that was first to use North Korean ammunition that America provided which stole it from Houthis.
Their solid-fueled ICBM is pretty of obviously a development of their earlier solid-fueled IRBMs, Jeffrey Lewis had been predicting that this would eventually happen for more than a decade.
First showcase of transporter erector launcher was in 2017 and changes happened years later with longer TEL than initial one.
TEL used for Hwasong-18 is longer than Topol-M ICBM and different thrust vector control as latter has graphite fins in exhaust compared to former having gimballed nozzle just as silo based American LGM-30 Minuteman unlike road mobile Hwasong-18.
Also before Hwasong-18 was ever being tested there were Hwasong-11Ga that was first shown in 2018 with first launch of it in 2019 that is analogue to both South Korean Hyunmoo-2 SRBM along Russian 9K720 Iskander which of course some asserted that Russia send them actual examples of 9K720 Iskander when thrust vector control mechanism were different along no provisions for decoy ECM's.
Also before even that with Pukguksong-1 when some asserted it was Chinese JL-1 SLBM despite many obvious differences to it such as having a single large nozzle compared to four smaller ones along having 8 grid fins compared to none as too two stage versus single.
breakingdefense.com
nuclearsecrecy.com
www.newsweek.com
www.airandspaceforces.com
www.atlanticcouncil.org
interestingengineering.com
www.telegraph.co.uk
