SEOUL —
North Korea fired two ballistic missiles into the sea early Sunday, Seoul’s
military said, the seventh such launch in two weeks, just hours after a
nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier concluded joint drills off the Korean
peninsula.
اضافة اعلان
Seoul, Tokyo,
and
Washington have ramped up combined naval exercises in recent weeks,
infuriating Pyongyang which sees them as rehearsals for invasion and justifies
its blitz of missile launches as necessary “countermeasures”.
With talks long
stalled,
Pyongyang has doubled down on its banned weapons programs, firing an
intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan last week, with officials and
analysts warning it has completed preparations for another nuclear test.
South Korea’s
military said Sunday it had “detected two short-range ballistic missiles
between 1:48am and 1:58am fired from the Munchon area in Kangwon province
towards the East Sea”, also known as the Sea of Japan.
The missiles
“flew approximately 350km at an altitude of 90km”,
Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of
Staff said in a statement, calling the launches a “serious provocation”.
Tokyo also
confirmed the launches, with the coast guard saying the missiles had landed
outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
Japanese Senior
Vice Defense Minister Toshiro Ino said Tokyo was analyzing the missiles, adding
that “either one of them has the possibility of being a submarine-launched
ballistic missile (SLBM)”.
Seoul said last
month it had detected signs the North was preparing to fire an SLBM, a weapon
Pyongyang last tested in May.
US National
Security Council spokesman
John Kirby said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has
rebuffed Washington’s calls for talks and instead chosen to “improve” his
ballistic missile program.
“He’s clearly
not abandoned his nuclear weapons ambitions,” Kirby told ABC News on Sunday.
“We’re going to
make sure that we have the capabilities in place to defend our national
security interest if it comes to that. But there’s no reason for it to come to
that,” he said, adding the US was committed to “a diplomatic path forward”.
Drills, drills, drills
North Korea’s missile tests usually aim to develop new capabilities,
but its recent launches, “from different locations at different times of day,
may be intended to demonstrate military readiness”, said Leif-Eric Easley, a
professor at
Ewha University in Seoul.
“The Kim regime
is trying to coerce Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington to abandon their trilateral
security cooperation.”
At an emergency
meeting of Seoul’s National Security Council following the missile test,
however, South Korean officials vowed to strengthen that cooperation, according
to a statement.
The recent spate
of launches is part of a record year of weapons tests by isolated North Korea,
which Kim last month declared an “irreversible” nuclear power, effectively
ending the possibility of denuclearization talks.
Seoul, Tokyo,
and Washington have ramped up joint military drills in response, with the
USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier and its strike group redeployed to the area last
week.
On Thursday,
Seoul’s military said it had scrambled 30 fighter jets after 12 North Korean
warplanes staged a rare formation flight and apparent air-to-surface firing
drills.
Go Myong-hyun, a
researcher at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said North Korea was
trying to claim that the nature of its sanctions-busting weapons tests were the
same as the defensive joint drills between the allies.
“North Korea is
trying to give equivalence through its continued missile launches,” he told
AFP.
No new sanctions
Analysts say
Pyongyang is emboldened to continue its weapons testing,
confident that gridlock at the UN will protect it from further sanctions.
Last week, the
UN Security Council held an emergency meeting to discuss Pyongyang’s launch
over Japan, which officials and analysts said was a Hwasong-12 that likely
travelled the longest horizontal distance of any North Korean test.
But at the
meeting, North Korea’s longtime ally and economic benefactor China blamed
Washington for provoking the spate of launches, with Deputy Chinese Ambassador
to the UN
Geng Shuang accusing Washington of “poisoning the regional security
environment”.
US ambassador to
the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield called for the “strengthening” of existing
sanctions on North Korea, something China and Russia vetoed in May.
The Security
Council has been divided on responding to Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions for
months, with
Russia and China on the sympathetic side and the rest of the
council pushing for punishment.
Officials in
Seoul and Washington have been warning for months that Pyongyang will also
conduct another nuclear test, likely after China’s Communist Party Congress
later this month.
“A flurry of missile
tests like the one we’ve seen could indicate a build-up to a nuclear test, but
predicting the timing with any precision is quite challenging,” US-based
security analyst Ankit Panda told AFP.
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