North Korea fires intermediate-range ballistic missile

Passersby watch television images of a North Korean missile launch at a Seoul train station on April 2, 2024.

North Korea fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile on Tuesday, the South Korean military announced, the latest launch in a series of banned weapons tests conducted by Pyongyang this year.

Hours later, South Korea, the United States and Japan conducted a joint air exercise involving nuclear-capable bombers.

Seoul’s military “detected around 6:53 a.m. (9:53 p.m. GMT) what is presumed to be an intermediate-range ballistic missile fired from the Pyongyang area toward the East Sea,” the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said. Korean (JCS), referring to the body of water also known as the Sea of ​​Japan. “We have strengthened surveillance and closely share relevant information with the United States and Japan.”

This is the third ballistic missile test since the start of the year, following those of a solid-fuel missile supervised by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in March and another with a hypersonic warhead. maneuverable in January.

Japanese public broadcaster NHK, citing unnamed government sources, said the missile “appears to have fallen in waters outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.”

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, reminding the press on Tuesday that the North had “launched ballistic missiles several times” this year, denounced a threat to regional security and judged that it was “absolutely unacceptable”.

Shortly after the announcement of the launch, the South Korean Defense Ministry announced that it had held a joint air exercise with Washington and Tokyo on Tuesday near the Korean Peninsula involving nuclear-capable B52-H bombers and F-15K fighters. The operation aimed to “improve joint responsiveness against nuclear and missile threats from the North,” according to the same source.

The launch comes less than two weeks after Pyongyang state media reported that Kim Jong Un had overseen a successful test of a solid-fuel engine for a “new type of intermediate-range hypersonic missile.”

It also comes just days after a Russian veto at the United Nations led to the dissolution of the UN sanctions monitoring system against North Korea and its nuclear program, amid an investigation into transfers of alleged weapons between Moscow and Pyongyang.

In just over a week, South Korea will hold its legislative elections, during which President Yoon Suk Yeol’s party, which favors a hard line against Pyongyang, will seek to regain control of Parliament.

– Strengthened ties with Moscow –

Pyongyang has been subject to a series of sanctions since its second nuclear test in 2009, but has nevertheless continued to develop its nuclear and weapons programs.

Since early 2024, North Korea has designated Seoul as its “main enemy,” closed agencies dedicated to reunification and inter-Korean dialogue, and threatened to go to war for any violation of its territory “even by 0.001 millimeter”.

In March, the United States and South Korea held one of their main annual joint military exercises, arousing the ire of Pyongyang, which systematically condemns these exercises as rehearsals for an invasion.

Seoul is a key ally of Washington in the region. The United States is stationing 27,000 American troops in South Korea to help protect itself from the nuclear-armed North.

For its part, Pyongyang has recently strengthened its ties with Russia, its traditional ally.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un held a summit in the Russian Far East in September, during which Mr Kim said ties with Moscow were his country’s “number one priority”.

The United States later claimed that Pyongyang had started supplying weapons to Moscow.

South Korea said in early March that North Korea had shipped about 7,000 containers of weapons to Russia for its war against Ukraine since transfers began in July.

LNT with Afp