Kim says missile tests will stop when joint drills end
SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un supervised a “new weapon” test, state media reported yesterday, the latest in a series of launches that US President Donald Trump has played down as Washington seeks to restart nuclear talks with Pyongyang.
The report carried by the Korean Central News Agency followed Mr Trump’s comments that Mr Kim had expressed a willingness to meet once the US-South Korean exercises are over and apologised for the slew of missile tests.
Mr Trump said on Saturday from his New Jersey golf club that Mr Kim spent much of his letter complaining about “the ridiculous and expensive exercises”. He said that Mr Kim offered him “a small apology” for the flurry of recent short-range missile tests that have rattled US allies in the region and that Mr Kim assured him they would stop when joint US-South Korea exercises end.
Saturday’s launch was the North’s fifth test in two weeks as it protests the annual military drills underway between Seoul and Washington which always infuriates Pyongyang.
Defence officials in Seoul said Pyongyang fired what appeared to be two short-range ballistic missiles on Saturday, flying 400 kilometres before splashing down in the sea between the Korean peninsula and Japan.
KCNA provided no technical specifications but said yesterday they were a “new weapon” developed to suit the country’s “terrain condition”.
The official Rodong Sinmun newspaper carried photos showing a broadly grinning Mr Kim surrounded by his aides as he observed the test.
Kim Dong-yub, a researcher at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies, said the weapons were likely to be new shortrange ballistic missiles that are part of Pyongyang’s modernisation of its military capabilities.
They were the “North Korean version of a low-cost, high-efficiency retaliation system” aimed at “incapacitating missile defence systems” in the South, Mr Kim added.
In a statement issued by KCNA on yesterday, the North’s foreign ministry said the South’s refusal to cancel its joint drills with the US had scuppered any prospect of future talks with Seoul.