Kim supervises test of rocket launcher
Seoul: north korean leader kim jon gun supervised another test firing of a new multiple rocket launch system the country plans to deploy to its forces starting this year, state media said on Saturday, part of its move to bolster its lineup of weapons targeting South Korean population centers.
North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Friday’s test confirmed the “advantage and destructive power” of the 240-millimetre multiple rocket launcher and its guided shells.
The agency said the system, which the North already tested twice this year, will be deployed to combat units from 2024 to 2026 to replace older weapons.
North korea in recent months has maintained an accelerated pace in weapons testing as it expands its military capabilities while diplomacy with the United States and South Korea remains stalled. Experts say Kim’s goal is to eventually pressure the United States into accepting the idea of the North as a nuclear power and negotiating economic and security concessions from a position of strength.
North Korea has focused on artillery systems in recent weeks.
Its testing activities included salvo launches of 600-mm multiple rocket launchers in April that state media described as a simulated nuclear counterattack against enemy targets.
Separately, North Korean hackers stole sensitive data, including individuals’ financial records, from a South Korean court computer network over two years, Seoul police said on Saturday.
North Korea is known to operate an army of thousands of hackers operating both inside the largely isolated country and apparently overseas, and has been blamed for several major cyberattacks in the past.
South Korean national police said the hackers pilfered 1,014 gigabytes of data from a court’s computer system from January 2021 to February 2023, citing a joint investigation with the country’s spy agency and prosecutors.
The hackers’ malware transmitted stolen data, including South Koreans’ marriage and personal debt records, to “four domestic and four overseas servers” before it was finally “detected by antivirus software,” the national police said in a statement sent to AFP.
The data breach was found to be the work of a North Korean hacking outfit after authorities compared the detected malicious programmes, server payment details and IP addresses with those identified in earlier hacking cases attributed to Pyongyang.