North Korea fires ballistic missile – Seoul
SEOUL: North Korea fired at least one unspecified ballistic missile on Saturday, its first test since the start of the year that comes days before Seoul and Washington are due to start joint tabletop exercises.
“North Korea fires an unidentified ballistic missile into [the] East Sea,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said, referring to the body of water also known as the Sea of Japan.
Tokyo also confirmed the launch, with its Defense Ministry saying Pyongyang had launched a “possible ballistic missile,” without giving more details.
Military tensions have risen on the Korean Peninsula after a year in which North Korea declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear state, and carried out sanctions-busting weapons tests nearly every month.
In response, Seoul has ramped up joint military drills with key security ally Washington, in a bid to convince the increasingly nervous South Korean public of the United States’ commitment to deter Pyongyang.
The Saturday launch — Pyongyang’s first since January 1 — came days before South Korea and the US are due to kick off a new tabletop exercise in Washington, in which the two allies will discuss how they would respond to the use of nuclear weapons by Pyongyang.
The exercise next week will focus on “joint planning, joint management and joint response with Washington’s nuclear assets” in case of a nuclear attack by Pyongyang, a South Korean Defense Ministry official told Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Friday.
Pyongyang has threatened an “unprecedentedly” strong response to the upcoming US-South Korea drills, describing them as preparations for war.
If Washington and Seoul go ahead with the drills, “they will face unprecedentedly persistent and strong counteractions,” a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Friday.
South Korea’s hawkish President Yoon Suk Yeol, who took office last May, has vowed to get tough on the North, and had moved to quickly ramp up joint drills, which had been scaled back during the coronavirus pandemic.
They were also paused for a bout of ill-fated diplomacy with Pyongyang under his predecessor Moon Jae-in.
South Korea also called the nuclear-armed North its “enemy” in a defense document earlier this week, the first time in six years it has used the term, signaling a further hardening of Seoul’s position toward Pyongyang.
North Korea’s missile tests last year also included one that landed near South Korea’s territorial waters for the first time since the end of the Korean War in 1953.
Last December, it sent five drones across the border into Seoul’s airspace, including skies near its presidential office.
Pyongyang has repeatedly said it is not interested in further talks, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un recently called for an “exponential” increase in his country’s nuclear arsenal.
At a military parade in the capital Pyongyang last week, North Korea showed off a record number of nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), including what analysts said was possibly a new solid-fueled ICBM.
North Korea has long sought to develop such an ICBM because it is easier to store and transport, is more stable and quicker to prepare for launch, and thus harder for the US to detect and destroy preemptively.