North Korea on Sunday tested a short-range ballistic missile bombardment from multiple locations into the sea, the South Korean military said, spreading a provocative streak at this year’s gun demonstrations that North Korean officials said. -Americans and South Koreans say it could culminate in a nuclear test explosion. .
Possibly setting a one-day record for North Korean ballistic launches, eight missiles were fired in a row for 35 minutes from at least four different locations, including from western and eastern coastal areas and two inland areas in the north and near from the capital, Pyongyang, in the South. said the Joint Chiefs of Staff of Korea.
He said the missiles flew between 110 and 670 kilometers at altitudes of 25 to 80 kilometers while reaching speeds of Mach 3 to 6.
South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff General Won In-Choul held a video conference on the launches with General Paul LaCamera, a U.S. general who heads the Korean Joint Forces Command. from the South and the US in Seoul, and reaffirmed the Allied joint defense. position, the JCS said in a statement.
Sung Kim, the special envoy of US President Joe Biden for North Korea, also discussed the releases with South Korean officials during a visit to Seoul, and expressed “deep regret” that North Korea continued to develop weapons despite fighting a COVID-19 outbreak. at home, the Seoul Foreign Ministry said.
Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said none of the missiles fell within Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
Defense exercises
The launch came a day after the USS Ronald Reagan, an American aircraft carrier, concluded a three-day naval drill with South Korea in the Philippine Sea, apparently the first drill with a carrier since November 2017, as countries move to improve their defense. exercises in the face of growing threats from North Korea.
North Korea has long condemned Allied combined military exercises as invasion tests and has often opposed their own missile exercises, including short-range launches in 2016 and 2017 that simulated nuclear attacks on South Korean ports and US military installations in Japan.
In this photo provided by the South Korean presidential office, President Yoon Suk-yeol, in the center, attends the National Security Council (NSC) meeting on Sunday at the Seoul presidential office. (South Korean Presidential Office / Associated Press)
In discussing the launches with his national security officials, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol lamented that North Korea was firing missiles at a rate of once every nine days this year and vowed to strengthen the defense of the South in conjunction with its alliance with the United States. according to his office.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called for maximum efforts to gather information on the launches and ensure the safety of aircraft and ships, although there were no immediate reports of damage.
The US Indo-Pacific Command said it was aware of North Korea’s launches, but said the event did not pose an “immediate threat to US personnel or territory, nor to our allies.” .
The launch was North Korea’s only round of missile launches in 2022 in 2022, a streak that has included the country’s first intercontinental ballistic missile demonstrations in nearly five years, as it continues to take advantage of a favorable environment to drive the development of weapons with United Nations Security. Council divided by the Russian war in Ukraine.
Experts say the confrontation between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is aimed at forcing the United States to accept the idea of the North as a nuclear power and to negotiate economic and security concessions from a position of strength.
South Korean and U.S. officials say there are also indications that North Korea is making progress on preparations for its nuclear test camp in the northeastern city of Punggye-ri. The North’s next nuclear test would be the seventh since 2006 and the first since September 2017, when it claimed to have detonated a thermonuclear bomb to fit its ICBMs.
On Friday, U.S. President Joe Biden’s special envoy for North Korea, Sung Kim, said Washington was “preparing for all contingencies” in close coordination with its Asian allies while participating in a trilateral meeting in Seoul with its South Korean and Japanese counterparts. on the nuclear conflict with North Korea.
Sung Kim, the U.S. special envoy for North Korea, speaks during a meeting with his South Korean counterpart Kim Gunn and Japanese counterpart Takehiro Funakoshi at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul. (Kim Hong-Ji / The Associated Press)
Stuck conversations
The United States has promised to push for additional international sanctions if North Korea conducts a new nuclear test, but the prospect of new UN Security Council measures looks weak.
Russia and China have vetoed a US-sponsored resolution that would have imposed additional sanctions on North Korea for its latest ballistic tests on May 25, which the South Korean military said involved an ICBM flying in a trajectory. medium-range and two short-range weapons. These tests came as Biden ended his trip to South Korea and Japan, where he reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to defend the two allies in the face of the North’s nuclear threat.
North Korea in March launched an ICBM almost directly at full capacity and saw it fly higher and for longer than any weapon it had ever tested, demonstrating the potential to reach the entire American continent.
While Kim’s ICBMs have garnered a lot of international attention, she has also spent the past three years expanding her arsenal of shorter-range solid-fuel missiles that threaten South Korea and Japan. He has pointed out his evidence with repeated comments that the North would use its nuclear weapons proactively when threatened or provoked, which experts say predicts an escalating nuclear doctrine that could create more concern for neighbors.
A news program on a television screen reports on the launch of North Korean missiles with archive footage of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Sunday at a Seoul train station. (Lee Jin-man / The Associated Press)
Nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang have stalled since 2019 due to disagreements over the exchange of US-led ceasefire sanctions against North Korea and North disarmament measures.
Despite the deepening economic problems, Kim has not shown a willingness to completely hand over an arsenal that he considers his strongest guarantee of survival and is clearly trying to turn the latent talks on denuclearization into a mutual arms reduction negotiation with the US. The United States, experts say.
Kim’s pressure campaign comes as the country faces a deadly outbreak of COVID-19 through its largely unvaccinated autocracy that lacks public health tools.
GAVI, the non-profit organization that manages the UN-backed COVAX distribution program, said Friday that it understands North Korea has accepted an offer of vaccines from its ally China and has begun administering doses. It is not immediately clear how many doses of vaccine the North received or how the country was deploying them.