North Korea launches cruise missiles

NORTH Korea launched a volley of surface-to-ship cruise missiles off its east coast yesterday, Seoul’s Defence Ministry said, Pyongyang’s fifth test in less than a month in defiance of global pressure to rein in its weapons programme.

The launches come less than a week after the United Nations expanded sanctions against Kim Jong-un’s regime in response to recent ballistic missile tests.

“North Korea fired multiple unidentified projectiles, assumed to be surface-to-ship cruise mis- siles,” the Defence Ministry said, adding the short-range missiles flew some 200 kilometres before falling into the Sea of Japan.

Pyongyang has ordered three ballistic missile launches, a surface-to-air missile, and yesterday’s cruise missile tests since the South’s President Moon Jaein took power in early May.

Moon advocated reconciliation with Seoul’s isolated neighbour but has taken a more stern position in the wake of the missile tests, which pose a policy challenge to the left-leaning leader.

“The only thing North Korea will earn through provocations is international isolation and economic hardship, and it will lose opportunities for development,” Moon said at a meeting of the National Security Council yesterday, according to Blue House spokesman Park Soo-hyun. Seoul “will not take a single step back or make compromises over the issue of national security or the safety of its people”.

Yesterday’s launch “was aimed at showing off various missile capabilities and antiship precision strike capability”, a spokesman for South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters, adding it did not appear to have violated UN sanctions.

Cruise missile tests do not contravene UN regulations, Korea Defence Network analyst Lee Il-woo said, adding they were “much slower than ballistic missiles and can be shot down by anti-aircraft guns”.

Any North Korean tests using ballistic missile technology are banned by UN resolutions.

“North Korea is carrying out carefully calibrated provocations . . . but restraining from ICBM tests or nuclear explosions which could bring about military retaliations by [US President Donald] Trump,” he added.