North Korean leader Kim Jong-un reportedly visited a research institute for intercontinental ballistic missiles(ICBM), just before departing for Beijing to attend China’s military parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

The North’s Korean Central News Agency(KCNA) reported on Tuesday that Kim visited the institute, which is under the Missile Administration’s General Academy of Chemical Materials, the previous day.

The report said Kim reviewed test results from the institute, which has created a high-thrust solid-fuel engine with a carbon fiber composite material and verified its reliability and precision through eight static firing tests in the past two years.

The KCNA said the maximum thrust of the new solid-fuel engine is one-thousand-960 kilonewtons and that it will be used in the ICBM Hwasongpho-19 series and the next-generation ICBM Hwasongpho-20.

North Korea last conducted an ICBM test with the Hwasong-19 on October 31 of last year. 

The missile is the largest in Pyongyang’s arsenal, but it has now revealed that it is developing the even more powerful Hwasong-20.