The place North Korea’s missile and nuclear program holds in the national psyche can be understood in part through the esteem in which scientists are held in the country. There are many high-profile residential construction projects devoted to scientists and their families. State-run media report on the honors they receive after nuclear tests and missile and space launches. They get parades like the one in Pyongyang in May.

“I’d say it’s the most prestigious job in the country right now,” Joshua Pollack, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, told me. “It used to be that they emphasized the importance of the military in their politics. Now they’ve begun de-emphasizing that and they’ve begun to emphasize the role of scientists in society both for advancing their economy and, even more than that, for advancing their nuclear weapons and missile technology.”

Although scientists are honored and rewarded, they also remain under pressure to produce increasingly better results. There’s a real possibility, said Vipin Narang, an associate professor of political science at MIT, that Kim, like his father Kim Jong Il, “threatened these scientists with their lives if they don’t make progress. That can be a very powerful motivator.”

Whatever the motivation, the results are impressive. Consider this: In 2016, North Korea tested 26 missiles; 16 were successful and 10 failed, according to a database maintained by the Nuclear Threat Initiative. That’s an approximately 62 percent success rate. There have been 18 tests in all so far this year: 12 successes, five failures, and one unknown. That’s a 67 percent success rate. Those figures underscore what Pollack said about North Korea being “determined to break through.” Another thing to consider—the number of tests so far this year.

“The fact that they are willing to test missiles so frequently suggests they are not really worried about supply,” Narang said. “And if you didn’t have the ability to produce so many missiles, then you might be a little more reluctant to test.”

There’s evidence to suggest that North Korea is, in fact, accelerating its push toward the domestic manufacturing of parts needed for its missile and nuclear programs, turning slowly away from the international black market on which it had traditionally relied. Andrea Berger, a senior research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said in an interview last week that North Korea has increasingly indigenized manufacturing. “Some of the goods they needed to once procure from overseas, they are now able to make domestically, which creates a local supply chain for, for example, missiles,” she told me.

That’s not to say that North Korea’s missile and nuclear technology is state-of-the-art. Many of the designs date back to the Cold War, when the North received nuclear technology from the Soviet Union. Over the years, it acquired weapons technology from China, Iran, Pakistan, and others, and through what can only be described as perseverance cobbled together successful programs.