On early Friday North Korea fired an additional ballistic missile and 170 rounds of artillery shells toward the sea and near the tense border with South Korea flew warplanes, recent barrage of weapons tests further raising animosities triggered by the North’s.
From its rivals the North Korean moves before it seeks to win greater concessions suggest with provocative weapons tests it is reviving an old playbook of stoking fears of war.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement, From the North’s capital region at 1:49 a.m. the short-range missile lifted off Friday and flew toward its eastern waters (1649 GMT Thursday; 12:49 p.m. EDT Thursday).
Since it resumed its testing activities on Sept. 25 it was North Korea’s 15th missile launch. In response to their “dangerous” military exercises involving a U.S. aircraft carrier, its recent missile tests were simulations of nuclear strikes on South Korean and U.S. targets, on Monday North Korea said.
After the latest missile test, North Korea fired 130 rounds of shells off its west coast and 40 rounds off its east coast. Inter-Korean agreement on reducing tensions under a 2018, thus violating the accord the shells fell inside maritime buffer zones the two Koreas established, South Korea’s military said.
Late Thursday and early Friday near the rivals’ border, North Korea separately flew warplanes, presumably 10 aircraft, prompting South Korea to scramble fighter jets. Between the two countries there were no reports of clashes.
North Korea’s provocations are becoming “indiscriminate'” but that his country has massive retaliation capabilities that can deter actual North Korean assaults to some extent, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said.
Its weapons tests South Korea issued “a stern warning to (North Korea) to immediately halt”, in a televised statement Maj. Gen. Kang Ho Pil of the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff later said. He said South Korea has the ability to any North Korean provocations to deliver an “overwhelming response”.
To finance North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs it imposed sanctions on 15 North Korean individuals and 16 organizations suspected of involvement in illicit activities, on Friday South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said.
Because the two Koreas have little financial dealings between them they were Seoul’s first unilateral sanctions on North Korea in five years, but observers say they are a symbolic step.
Most ballistic missile launches that are banned by U.N. Security Council resolutions of the North’s recent weapons tests. But to a divide at the U.N the North hasn’t been slapped with fresh sanctions thanks. with China over their strategic competition and over U.S. disputes with Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
Yasukazu Hamada, Japanese Defense Minister said “We cannot overlook its substantial advancement of missile technology and whatever the intentions are, North Korea’s repeated ballistic missile launches are absolutely impermissible”.
A possible reference to describe the North’s highly maneuverable KN-23 weapon modelled on Russia’s Iskander missile, he said the missile flew on an “irregular” trajectory.
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement that adding that the U.S. commitments to the defense of South Korea and Japan remain “ironclad, the North Korean launch didn’t pose an immediate threat to U.S. personnel or territory, or to its allies”.
In recent weeks other North Korean tests included demonstrated a potential range to reach the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam and a new intermediate-range missile that flew over Japan; a ballistic missile fired from an inland reservoir, a first for the country; and long-range cruise missiles.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the tests successfully demonstrated his military’s expanding nuclear strike capabilities, after Wednesday’s cruise missile launches.
According to North Korea’s state media he said his nuclear forces were fully prepared for “actual war to bring enemies under their control at a blow” and vowed to expand the operational realm of his nuclear armed forces,.
Some observers had predicted North Korea would likely temporarily pause its testing activities this week in consideration of its ally China, which is set to begin a major political conference Sunday to give President Xi Jinping a third five-year term as party leader.
Nuclear tests that prompted Kim and then U.S.-President Donald Trump to exchange threats of total destruction and North Korea’s ongoing testing spree is reminiscent of its 2017 torrid run of missile.
Apart a year later Kim later abruptly entered high-stakes nuclear diplomacy with Trump in 2018 but their negotiations fell due to wrangling over how much sanctions relief Kim should be provided in return for a partial surrender of his nuclear capability.
He has no intentions of resuming nuclear diplomacy, Kim has repeatedly said. With the United State to wrest extensive sanctions relief and other concessions in return for partial denuclearization steps but some experts say he would eventually want to win international recognition of his country as a nuclear state and hold arms control talks.
Including non-war situations when it may perceive its leadership as under threat, the urgency of North Korea’s nuclear program has grown since it passed a new law last month authorizing the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons over a broad range of scenarios.
Mostly of short-range nuclear-capable missiles targeting South Korea Most of the recent North Korean tests. The first of in five years, some analysts say North Korea’s possible upcoming nuclear test, would be related to efforts to manufacture battlefield tactical warheads to be placed on such short-range missiles.
With some politicians and scholars renewing their calls for the U.S. to redeploy its tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea as deterrence against intensifying North Korean nuclear threats, these developments sparked security jitters in South Korea.
Source:- https://mymktblogs.com/further-inflaming-tensions-nkorea-fires-missile-and-shells/
