North Korea fired a ballistic missile Wednesday, Seoul said, a week after Kim Jong Un vowed to boost Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal and just days before the South inaugurates a new, hawkish president.
Pyongyang has conducted 14 weapons tests since January, including firing an intercontinental ballistic missile at full-range for the first time since 2017.
Last week Kim oversaw a huge military parade, vowed to rapidly expand and improve his nuclear arsenal, and warned of possible “pre-emptive” strikes — as satellite imagery indicates he may soon resume nuclear testing.
The Wednesday test comes days before the May 10 inauguration of South Korea’s President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol, who has vowed to take a hard line with North Korea and ramp up security cooperation with the US after years of failed diplomacy.
North Korea fired the ballistic missile at 12:03 pm (0303 GMT), Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said, likely from the Sunan Airfield near Pyongyang, the site of previous recent ICBM tests.
The missile flew 470 km (300 miles) and reached an altitude of 780 km, the JCS said, adding it was a “blatant violation of UN Security Council resolutions.”
Japan’s minister of defence Makoto Oniki confirmed the launch and the missile’s trajectory, saying it had landed “outside of Japan’s exclusive economic zone.”
North Korea’s “repeated launches of ballistic missiles threaten peace and safety of our nation, the region, and the international community,” he added.
Seoul’s national security council said it “strongly” condemned the launch, urging the North to “cease actions that pose a serious threat to the Korean Peninsula” and to return to dialogue.
Since high-level diplomacy with then-US president Donald Trump collapsed, North Korea has doubled-down on Kim’s plans for military modernisation, seemingly impervious to threats of more sanctions as it ignores the United States’ offers of talks.
