THE MISSILE FACTORY

VIKTOR MOISA, A RETIRED ROCKET SCIENTIST, WELCOMED THE NORTH KOREANS TO HIS INSTITUTE IN EASTERN UKRAINE JUST AS HE WOULD WITH ANY OTHER GUESTS. HE TOOK THEM UPSTAIRS TO THE SHOWROOM OF SOVIET SATELLITES AND ROCKET ENGINES, THE PRIDE OF THE INSTITUTE’S COLLECTION. THEN THEY WENT OUT TO THE YARD, where an array of parts for ballistic missiles were on display. This was in the early 2000s, well before North Korea would test its first nuclear bomb in 2006. So the visitors’ interest in missile technology did not arouse Moisa’s suspicion. “They came as tourists,” he told TIME on a breezy afternoon last fall. “At least that’s how they presented themselves.”

We were standing in the same yard he had shown to the North Koreans, a paved lot in the city of Dnipro where old missile components are still on show, many of them made at a nearby rocket factory known as Yuzhmash. Guidance systems, fuel pumps and the massive cones designed to hold nuclear warheads at the tip of a rocket all stood in the autumn sun like leftovers from a military rummage sale. Moisa, a cheerful 79-year-old with a puff of silver hair, says he understands in retrospect that his guests from North Korea were probably spies. “It’s just a guess,” he told me with a smile. “But they were probably dreaming of being a real missile power.”

That dream has since been achieved. Over the past eight months, North Korea has test-launched three rockets capable of striking the U.S. mainland. According to missile experts in the U.S. and Europe, the key components of these rockets are based on Soviet designs, much like those displayed in Moisa’s museum. The latest North Korean breakthrough, the Hwasong-15 missile, was tested in November; experts believe it could be powerful enough to lob a nuclear warhead all the way to New York City.

This feat of engineering, which only a few nations have ever achieved, exposed a long history of failures on the part of the U.S. and its allies. It showed that the strict sanctions they imposed on North Korea failed to isolate its military. It showed that North Korea, a country so poor that its cities