North Korea launches projectiles from coast
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA >> North Korea fired two projectiles off its east coast Thursday amid stalled efforts to resume talks on ending the country’s nuclear weapons program, the South Korean military said.
The projectiles were launched from Wonsan, a coastal town east of Pyongyang, the capital, and flew 267 miles before landing in waters between North Korea and Japan, the military said in a statement. It gave no additional details, except to say that South Korean and American military officials were analyzing the flight and other data to determine what type of projectiles were fired.
The launchings were the first such test since President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met June 30 in South Korea near the Demilitarized Zone. The previous tests were fired May 9, when North Korea launched what military experts called short-range ballistic missiles.
North Korea has recently been expressing frustration with Washington and Seoul. It warned on July 16 that if the United States did not cancel a joint military drill with South Korea scheduled for next month, it might scuttle efforts to resume negotiations with Washington and even resume nuclear and long-range missile tests.
When Kim met with Trump at Panmunjom in late June, they agreed to restart staff-level talks on the terms for denuclearizing North Korea. Trump said then that negotiations could resume within two or three weeks.
But North Korea appeared to link the resumption of talks to the cancellation of the military drill, code-named 19-2 Dong Maeng, saying that it undermined a mood for dialogue created when Kim and Trump met. Kim had announced a halt to his country’s nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile tests in April 2018, paving the way for his first meeting with Trump, held in Singapore in June 2018.
North Korea conducted its last major weapons test in November 2017, when it launched a missile believed powerful enough to reach the continental United States.
After the Singapore meeting, Trump vowed to halt major joint military drills with South Korea. But the South Korean and American militaries have agreed to hold smaller and reconfigured joint drills, and 19-2 Dong Maeng is one of them.
The Singapore meeting ended with a vague agreement in which Trump committed to building new relations and providing security guarantees for North Korea in return for Kim’s agreement to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
But when the leaders met again in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February, they failed to agree on how to implement their earlier deal.
The Hanoi talks collapsed when Kim demanded that Washington lift all major sanctions against his country in return for the dismantling of its nuclear complex in Yongbyon, north of Pyongyang, the capital. Trump insisted on a more comprehensive breaking up of the North’s nuclear programs, including its nuclear weapons and missiles.
“North Korea is clearly upset that the U.S. and South Korea are conducting joint military exercises,” said Harry J. Kazianis, senior director of Korean studies at the Washingtonbased Center for the National Interest.
“Because of this, Pyongyang has refused to set a date for working-level talks with Washington, won’t accept food aid from Seoul and is now once again testing weapons systems that will surely increase tensions. We should not be shocked by this move and, in fact, we should have seen it coming.”
North Korean officials have recently indicated that they might not accept 50,000 tons of rice that the South has offered as humanitarian aid, South Korean officials said Wednesday. South Korea offered the aid through the U.N. World Food Program last month in the hope that such a gesture would help the North return to talks on improving interKorean ties and ending its nuclear weapons program.