Seoul: North Korea launched two ballistic missiles into the sea early on Sunday, hours after a US aircraft carrier with nuclear power ended joint exercises off the Korean peninsula, South Korea's military said. This was the country's seventh such launch in the last two weeks.
In recent weeks, Seoul, Tokyo and Washington have intensified their joint naval exercises, angering Pyongyang, which interprets them as assault exercises and calls its barrage of missile launches as necessary "countermeasures" as justified.
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As talks have been stalled for a long time, Pyongyang has accelerated its development of banned weapons systems, launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan last week and completed preparations for another nuclear test, officials and analysts said. According to.
The East Sea, also known as the Sea of ​​Japan, is a body of water. On Sunday, the South Korean military said it had "detected between 0148 and 0158 (1648-1658 GMT) two short-range ballistic missiles that were fired from the Muncheon area of ​​Kangwon province towards the East Sea."
Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the missiles "flighted approximately 350 kilometers (217 mi) at an altitude of 90 kilometers" and described the launch as "a serious provocation."
The Coast Guard reported that the missiles had landed outside Japan's exclusive economic zone, and Tokyo also confirmed the launch.
Japan's senior defense minister Toshiro Ino said the missiles were being tested in Tokyo and said "one of them has the potential to be a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM)."
Seoul claimed last month that it had received indications that Pyongyang was getting ready to launch an SLBM, a weapon it last tested in May.
According to a statement from the US military's Indo-Pacific Command, they were "consulting closely with our allies and partners" and that the launch demonstrated how "unstable" North Korea's missile program.
Professor Leif-Eric Easley of Iwa University in Seoul said North Korea usually conducts missile tests to develop new capabilities, but its recent launches may be aimed at "demonstrating military readiness", he said.
As Pyongyang claims, it is not just for self-defense and deterrence, according to Isley," he told AFP.
Seoul, Tokyo and Washington are being pressured by the Kim regime to end their trilateral security cooperation.
The latest round of launches is part of a record year for North Korea's nuclear test, which isolated nation leader Kim Jong Un declared "irreversible" last month, effectively ending the prospect of denuclearization talks.
Seoul, Tokyo and Washington have increased joint military exercises in response to a growing threat from the north, involving the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier and its strike group, which were redeployed to the region last week.
Seoul's military said on Thursday that 12 North Korean warplanes had sent 30 fighter jets after taking off unusually and conducting air-to-surface firing exercises.
Go Myeong-hyun, a researcher at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, claimed that North Korea was attempting to argue that defensive joint exercises between the allies and its weapons tests, which violated sanctions, were similar.
He told AFP that North Korea was trying to establish equality through its ongoing missile launches.
According to analysts, Pyongyang is excited to test its weapons because it believes the inaction of the United Nations will protect it from additional sanctions.
The Hwasong-12 rocket that Pyongyang launched over Japan last week has probably traveled the longest horizontal distance of any North Korean test, according to officials and analysts. The United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting last week to discuss the launch.
But at the meeting, China, a steadfast ally and economic supporter of North Korea, accused the United States of provoking the recent launch with Geng Shuang, deputy Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, saying the United States was "poisoning the regional security environment." . "
China and Russia vetoed a proposal in May to "strengthen" sanctions against North Korea made by US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
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For months, the council has been divided over how to respond to Pyongyang's nuclear aspirations, with Russia and China backing sanctions and the rest of the council backing sympathetic.
Soo Kim, an analyst at the RAND Corporation, told AFP: "For Kim's benefit, there are other contingencies on the slate of US policymakers, including Russia and China, his two main backers."
Therefore, she said, "it's unlikely that Moscow or Beijing will ever support the US on the North Korea issue. "If anything, the two nations may have an even stronger incentive to not assist the US at this time,"
Long before China's Communist Party Congress later this month, Pyongyang will likely conduct another nuclear test, according to officials in Seoul and Washington.
Ankit Panda, a security analyst based in the US, told AFP that "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."
