Kim rocket rattles S. Korean leader
Prez must now focus on threat from North
North Korea let loose yet another ballistic missile over the Sea of Japan on Sunday — but this one is being seen as a direct challenge to the newly elected president of South Korea.
The launch now forces the 4day-old presidency of Moon Jae-in to switch priorities from the domestic economic agenda that he’d campaigned on to dealing with Pyongyang.
Sunday’s test launch appeared to involve a short-range missile, the US Pacific Command said.
“The flight is not consistent with an intercontinental ballistic missile,” a spokesperson said.
North Korea had suffered a spate of embarrassing failures in recent tests of longer-range missiles.
The latest missile was launched from North Korea’s western coast and flew for about 30 minutes before plunging some 500 miles away into the Sea of Japan.
North Korea needs tests to perfect its missile program, but it also is thought to stage launches after the elections of new US and South Korean presidents in an attempt to gauge a new administration.
In a statement Saturday night, the White House noted that the test missile came “closer to Russia than Japan.
“The President cannot imagine that Russia is pleased,” the statement said.
“North Korea has been a flagrant menace for too long,” the statement added, urging that “all nations” join in “far stronger sanctions” against the rogue nation.
Earlier Saturday, A senior diplomat of Kim Jong-un’s regime made news by saying Pyongyang would agree to dialogue with the United States if conditions were right.
Choe Son-hui, North Korea’s foreign ministry director general for US affairs, had made the diplomacy overture to reporters in Beijing as she was traveling home from Norway, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.
“We’ll have dialogue if the conditions are there,” she told reporters when asked if the North was preparing to hold talks with the Trump administration.
But the North’s state media also said Saturday that the nation will continue to bolster its nuclear capability if the United States does not abandon a campaign of “maximum pressure and engagement.”
A State Department spokesman meanwhile said the US remains open to talks, but North Korea would have to “cease all its illegal activities and aggressive behavior in the region.”