SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s military said North Korea fired a suspected long-range missile from its capital into the sea Saturday, a day after it threatened to take forceful action against South Korea and the United States due to a joint attack. military exercises. .
The Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said the ballistic missile was launched at around 5:22 p.m. from an area in Sunan, the site of Pyongyang International Airport, where the North has conducted most of its ICBM tests. . The South Korean military did not immediately say where the weapon fell.
North Korea’s foreign ministry on Friday threatened “unprecedented” strong action against its rivals after South Korea announced a series of planned military exercises with the United States aimed at stepping up its response to growing threats from the North Seas.
Toshiro Ino, Japan’s deputy defense minister, said the missile landed in the waters of Japan’s exclusive economic zone, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of the island of Oshima. Oshima is located off the west coast of the northernmost main island of Hokkaido.
South Korean President Yun Suk Yeol’s office said his national security director, Kim Sung-han, was chairing an emergency security meeting to discuss the launch. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Tokyo was in close communication with Washington and Seoul about the launch, which he described as “an act of violence that escalates the challenge to international order.”
The launch was North Korea’s first since Jan. 1, when it tested a short-range weapon. It followed a massive military parade in Pyongyang last week, where troops fired more than a dozen ICBMs as leader Kim Jong Un looked on gleefully from a balcony.
The unprecedented number of missiles underlined a continued expansion of his country’s military capabilities despite limited resources, while negotiations with Washington remain at a standstill.
Those missiles included a new system that experts say is likely linked to the North’s stated desire to acquire a solid-fuel ICBM. North Korea’s current ICBMs, including the Hwasong-17, use liquid propellants that require injection before launch and cannot remain fueled for long periods of time. A solid fuel alternative would take less time to prepare and is easier to move onto vehicles, offering less chance of detection.
It was not immediately clear whether Saturday’s launch would have a solid fuel system.
“North Korea’s missile launches are often tests of emerging technologies, and it will be noteworthy if Pyongyang claims progress with a long-range solid-fuel missile,” said Leif-Eric Easley, Ewha Womans Professor of International Studies University of Seoul. . “The Kim regime may also frame this launch as a response to US defense cooperation with South Korea and UN diplomacy sanctions.”
North Korea is coming off a record year in weapons demonstrations with more than 70 ballistic missiles launched, including ICBMs with a potential range to reach the US mainland. The North also carried out a series of drops it described as simulated nuclear strikes against South Korean and US targets in response to the Allies’ resumption of large-scale joint military exercises that had been scaled back for years of days.
North Korea’s missile tests have been punctuated by threats of pre-emptive nuclear strikes against South Korea or the United States, for what it perceives as a wide range of scenarios that endanger its leadership.
Kim doubled his nuclear power entering 2023, calling for an “exponential increase” in the country’s nuclear warheads, the mass production of tactical combat nuclear weapons aimed at “enemy” South Korea and the development of more advanced ICBMs.
North Korea’s statement on Friday accused Washington and Seoul of planning more than 20 military exercises this year, including large-scale ground exercises, and described its rivals as “archcriminals who deliberately disrupt regional peace and stability.” .
The statement came hours after South Korean Defense Ministry officials told lawmakers in Seoul and Washington that they would hold an annual computer-simulated joint exercise in mid-March. The 11-day training would reflect North Korea’s nuclear threats and unspecified lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war, according to Heo Tae-keun, South Korea’s deputy minister of national defense policy.
Heo said the two countries will also hold joint field exercises in mid-March, which will be larger than those held in recent years.
South Korea and the United States will also hold a one-day mass exercise at the Pentagon next week to hone their response to a potential use of nuclear weapons by North Korea.
The exercise, scheduled for Wednesday, will determine possible scenarios in which North Korea would use nuclear weapons, explore how to deal with them militarily and formulate crisis management plans, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said.
North Korea has traditionally described the US-South Korea military exercises as rehearsals for a potential invasion, while the allies insist their drills are defensive in nature.
The United States and South Korea have scaled back or canceled some of their major exercises in recent years, first to support the former Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts with Pyongyang and then because of COVID-19. But growing nuclear threats from North Korea have increased the urgency for South Korea and Japan to strengthen their defense postures in line with their alliances with the United States.
South Korea sought to ensure that the United States quickly and decisively used its nuclear capabilities to protect its ally in the face of a North Korean nuclear attack. In addition to the expansion and evolution of military exercises with South Korea, the United States has also expressed its commitment to increase the deployment of strategic military assets such as fighter jets and aircraft carriers to the Korean peninsula in a show of force.
In December, Japan made a major break with its strict post-World War II principle of self-defense, adopting a new national security strategy that includes pre-emptive strikes and cruise missiles to counter growing threats from North Korea, China and Russia.
Associated Press writer Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo contributed to the report.
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