North Korea's battlefield missile program probably began with the reverse engineering of the FROG-5 and the mid-1970s acquisition of local production of China's Samlet antiship missile, a result of a long history of bilateral cooperation. Egypt also has a longstanding bilateral relationship with North Korea and became involved in the missile program as an outgrowth of military and defense industry cooperation that dates back to 1973.

Between 1981 and 1985, North Korea is believed to have reverse engineered the Scud-B using several Egyptian-supplied, Soviet-made Scud-Bs. Production facilities are located on the outskirts of P'yongyang, and missile test facilities are concentrated at a few bases along the eastern coast north of Wnsan. North Korea first test-launched the Scud-B in 1984 and, with the help of Iranian capital investments, began production by 1987. During the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), North Korea provided Iran with as great an amount of military supplies as the latter was able to pay for. North Korea also is believed involved in sales or technology transfer agreements associated with ballistic missile developments with Egypt, Iran, Syria, and Libya. Development of a follow-on, longer range Scud-C is believed to have commenced around the same time the first test launches occurred in 1989.

In 1991 North Korea was developing a new type of ballistic missile with a range in excess of 900 kilometers. The new missile was tentatively called the Nodong 1 by Western sources after the name of its test facility. The initial tests failed, but on the basis of North Korea's development pace for the Scud series, deployment would be possible by mid-decade. North Korea successfully test-fired the Nodong 1 in May 1993. A follow-on missile called the Taepodong 1 and the Taepodong 2 by the foreign press, is being developed with a range of up to 6,000 kilometers.

Data as of June 1993