NKorea fires 2 missiles after ICBM launch, SKorea says
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has fired a pair of short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast on Monday, South Korea’s military said, two days after the North resumed testing activities with an intercontinental ballistic missile launch.
South Korea detected the two launches from a western coastal town, north of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, on Monday morning, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
It said South Korea has boosted its surveillance posture and maintains a readiness in close coordination with the United States.
Japan’s coast guard also issued warnings over what it called possible ballistic missile launches by North Korea.
The coast guard, quoting the Defense Ministry information, said the first missile was believed to have landed in the water. Kyodo News said it landed outside the Japanese Exclusive Economic Zone.
Also Monday morning, Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, issued a statement warning of weapons demonstrations over what she called U.S. deployments of strategic military assets to the Korean Peninsula. She called the United States “the worst maniacs.”
“The frequency of using the Pacific as our firing range depends upon the U.S. forces’ action character,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by state media. “We are well aware of the movement of U.S. forces’ strategic strike means recently getting brisk around the Korean Peninsula.”
She didn’t elaborate but could refer to the U.S. flyover of B-1B long-range,
supersonic bombers on Sunday for separate training with South Korea and Japan.
The B-1B deployment came as response to North Korea’s launch of the Hwasong-15 ICBM off its east coast Saturday in the country’s first missile test since Jan. 1.
North Korea’s state media said Sunday the ICBM test was meant to further bolster its “fatal” nuclear attack capacity and verify the weapon’s reliability and the combat readiness of the country’s nuclear force.
The United States responded by flying longrange supersonic bombers in a show of force later Sunday for separate joint exercises with South Korean and Japanese warplanes.
Saturday’s ICBM test signals that Kim Jong Un is using his rivals’ drills as a chance to expand his country’s nuclear arsenal to get the upper hand in future dealings with the United States.
North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said Saturday’s launch of the Hwasong-15 ICBM was organized “suddenly” without prior notice at Kim’s direct order.
KCNA said the launch
was designed to verify the weapon’s reliability and the combat readiness of the country’s nuclear force.
It said the missile was fired at a high angle and reached a maximum altitude of about 3,585 miles, flying a distance of about 615 miles for 67 minutes before accurately hitting a preset area in the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.
The steep-angle launch was apparently to avoid neighboring countries. The flight details reported by North Korea, which roughly matched the launch information previously assessed by its neighbors, show the weapon is theoretically capable of reaching the mainland U.S. if fired at a standard trajectory.
The Hwasong-15 launch demonstrated the North’s “powerful physical nuclear deterrent” and its efforts to “turn its capacity of fatal nuclear counterattack on the hostile forces” into an extremely strong one that cannot be countered, KCNA said.
North Korea has steadfastly slammed regular South Korea-U.S. military drills as an invasion rehearsal though the allies say their exercises are defensive in nature.