Nathan News

SEOUL — North Korea on Friday launched a short-range ballistic missile, as well as a barrage of rockets inside a maritime buffer zone near the border with South Korea, shortly after its planes warplanes flew close enough to the border for Seoul to respond with a show of force by deploying its own warplanes.

The missile launch was North Korea’s 26th weapons test this year that involved ballistic or cruise missiles, more than any other year, and the sixth such test this month. The combination of missile and rocket tests and air force maneuvers indicated the North was determined to keep tensions high on the Korean peninsula.

Under United Nations Security Council resolutions, North Korea is prohibited from testing ballistic missiles, as well as nuclear weapons. But the North and its leader, Kim Jong-un, have used a period of stalled diplomacy with Washington to develop and test more weapons.

Friday’s launch – Thursday in the United States – took place from the Sunan district of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, and the missile traveled 435 miles to waters off the east coast, officials said. South Korean defense.

Around the time North Korea launched the missile, it also fired 170 rockets into the waters off its east and west coasts from multiple-tube rocket launchers. The rockets fell into the buffer zone created by the two Koreas around their land and sea border when Mr. Kim and Moon Jae-in, then South Korea’s president, met in Pyongyang in 2018. The two sides had agreed not to conduct rocket or artillery exercises in the area to help reduce military tensions.

North Korea’s military said on Friday it conducted its missile and rocket tests and air force maneuvers as a warning against South Korea’s “provocative action”. He accused the South Korean army of raising tensions by conducting artillery drills near the border for 10 hours on Thursday.

South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol’s office has accused the North of using the South’s routine artillery drill as an excuse to violate the 2018 buffer zone agreement. “We emphasize that North Korea will pay the price of his provocations,” he said in a statement.

Short-range ballistic missile testing by North Korea has become almost routine in recent months. In its last such test, carried out on Wednesday, Pyongyang said it launched two long-range “strategic” cruise missiles off the west coast. He said they were deployed by units tasked with what he called, in an English statement, “tactical nukes”, indicating that the missiles were capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

North Korea also said that in some of its recent missile tests, its soldiers conducted rehearsals to launch nuclear-capable short-range ballistic missiles at South Korea.

Mr. Kim attended the recent weapons tests, saying he felt no need for dialogue with Washington or Seoul. He also ordered his army to strengthen its “nuclear response posture and nuclear attack capabilities”.

The flurry of missile tests prompted the United States to send a group of aircraft carriers to the waters off the east coast of the Korean peninsula last month and this month for joint exercises with South Korea. South and Japan.

North Korea has reacted to such moves with its own military maneuvers, accusing its adversaries of preparing for the invasion through their joint exercises. He also cited their exercises as one of the reasons he developed his nuclear arsenal.

Between 10:30 p.m. Thursday and 12:20 a.m. Friday, about 10 North Korean military aircraft flew 15 to 29 miles north of the border with South Korea, the South Korean military said. The planes did not violate the no-fly zone the two Koreas adopted around their border at the 2018 inter-Korean summit. But the flights prompted South Korea to send in F-35A jets and put its air defenses on heightened alert.

North Korea carried out a similar maneuver last week, when 12 military aircraft, including eight fighter jets and four bombers, flew in formation and carried out air-to-ground gunnery drills in airspace around mid -way between Pyongyang and the inter-Korean border. The planes also flew close enough to the border for South Korea to send 30 fighter jets, including F-15K fighters.

North Korea’s military suffers from a chronic shortage of fuel and spare parts – a problem made worse by UN sanctions and the pandemic – and its air force rarely conducts a large-scale exercise. . But the country has traditionally conducted its own military exercises, including weapons testing, when the United States and its allies conduct joint exercises.

On Saturday, for example, North Korea conducted an air strike exercise which it says involved more than 150 aircraft. He said it was the first time he had deployed so many aircraft at the same time in an exercise.

South Korea has said it is strengthening military cooperation with the United States in the face of North Korea’s growing nuclear threat. Washington has assured that it will use force if necessary to protect its ally, possibly including nuclear weapons. But on Thursday, President Yoon Suk Yeol’s office denied discussing the redeployment of US tactical nuclear weapons to the South.

The United States claims to have removed all such weapons from South Korea in the early 1990s. But as the North’s nuclear threat has grown, some politicians from Mr. Yoon’s conservative People Power party have suggested that South Korea consider to develop its own nuclear weapons or asks Washington to redeploy them.

Mr Yoon, however, said South Korea had no intention of developing nuclear weapons.