South Korea’s military said North Korea on Saturday fired one suspected long-range missile from its capital toward the ocean, a day after it threatened to take strong measures against South Korea and the U.S. over their joint military exercises.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said the ballistic missile was fired at around 5:22 p.m. from an area in Sunan, the location of Pyongyang’s international airport. It didn’t immediately say where the weapon landed.
North Korea’s Foreign Ministry on Friday threatened with “unprecedently” strong motion against its rivals, after South Korea announced a series of planned military exercises with america aimed toward sharpening their response to the North’s growing threats.
Toshiro Ino, Japan’s vice minister for defense, said the missile was expected have landed in waters inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, about 125 mileswest of Oshima island. Oshima lies off the western coast of the northernmost essential island of Hokkaido.
“We’re doing our utmost, working closely with the U.S., to realize information, analyze and take appropriate vigilance and surveillance measures to guard the lives and property of our people,” he told reporters.
The launch was North Korea’s first known testing activity since Jan. 1, when it test-fired a short-range weapon. It followed an enormous military parade in Pyongyang last week where troops rolled out greater than a dozen intercontinental ballistic missiles as leader Kim Jong Un watched in delight from a balcony.
The unprecedented variety of missiles underscored a continuation of expansion of his country’s military capabilities despite limited resources while negotiations with Washington remain stalemated.
Those missiles included a recent system experts say is possibly linked to the North’s stated desire to amass a solid-fuel ICBM. North Korea’s existing ICBMs, including Hwasong-17s, use liquid propellants that require pre-launch injections and can’t remain fueled for prolonged periods. A solid-fuel alternative would take less time to organize and is simpler to maneuver around on vehicles, providing less opportunity to be spotted.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether Saturday’s launch involved a solid-fuel system.
North Korea is coming off a record yr in weapons demonstrations with greater than 70 ballistic missiles fired, including ICBMs with potential range to succeed in the U.S. mainland. The North also conducted a slew of launches it described as simulated nuclear attacks against South Korean and U.S. targets in response to the allies’ resumption of large-scale joint military exercise that had been downsized for years.
North Korea’s missile tests have been punctuated by threats of preemptive nuclear attacks against South Korea or america over what it perceives as a broad range of scenarios that put its leadership under threat.
Kim doubled down on his nuclear push entering 2023, calling for an “exponential increase” within the country’s nuclear warheads, mass production of battlefield tactical nuclear weapons targeting “enemy” South Korea and the event of more advanced ICBMs.
The North Korean statement on Friday accused Washington and Seoul of planning greater than 20 rounds of military drills this yr, including large-scale field exercises, and described its rivals as “the arch-criminals deliberately disrupting regional peace and stability.”
The statement got here hours after South Korea’s Defense Ministry officials told lawmakers that Seoul and Washington will hold an annual computer-simulated combined training in mid-March. The 11-day training would reflect North Korea’s nuclear threats, in addition to unspecified lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war, based on Heo Tae-keun, South Korea’s deputy minister of national defense policy.
Heo said the 2 countries may even conduct joint field exercises in mid-March that might be greater than those held up to now few years.
South Korea and the U.S. may even hold a one-day tabletop exercise next week on the Pentagon to sharpen a response to a possible use of nuclear weapons by North Korea.
The exercise, scheduled for Wednesday, would arrange possible scenarios where North Korea uses nuclear weapons, explore the way to address them militarily and formulate crisis management plans, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said.
North Korea has traditionally described U.S.-South Korea military exercises as rehearsals for a possible invasion, while the allies insist that their drills are defensive in nature.
