SEOUL – North Korea launched a salvo of short-range ballistic missiles toward waters off its east coast on Sunday, a day after the United States and South Korea completed a joint naval exercise involving South Korea. member of a US aircraft carrier strike group, according to South Korean defense officials.
So far this year, North Korea has conducted 18 weapons tests involving dozens of missiles, more than the tests in 2020 and 2021 combined. South Korea’s military said Sunday it had fired eight short-range ballistic missiles from the Sunan area of the capital Pyongyang and three other locations. Pyongyang’s international airport is located at Sunan, and North Korea has fired missiles from there in the past.
The missiles, all launched in a period of 37 minutes, flew between 68 and 416 miles, the South Korean military said in a statement. It said it “sternly urges North Korea to cease serious provocations that damage peace and stability” on the Korean Peninsula.
The missile test was North Korea’s third since the new president of South Korea, Yoon Suk-yeol, inaugurate on May 10. Britain promised to increase military cooperation with the United States, citing threats to North Korea’s expanding weapons program.
South Korean officials said on Saturday that the South Korean and US navies completed a three-day joint exercise in international waters off the Japanese island of Okinawa, in the East China Sea. The aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan took part in the exercise, the first exercise between the US and South Korea since 2017 involving an aircraft carrier.
Officials in Seoul and Washington expect North Korea weapon test series to continue. They say North Korea has prepared an underground test site in Punggye-ri, in the northeast of the country, to detonate a potentially nuclear weapon for the first time since 2017.
President Biden met Mr. Yoon in Seoul last month, and they agreed to discuss expanding joint military exercises. The naval exercise near Okinawa last week was held to follow through on that commitment, officials said, although the ships involved were en route to a multinational exercise already underway, officials said. previously scheduled near Hawaii.
Biden’s predecessor, Donald J. Trump, and Mr. Yoon’s Moon Jae-in, canceled or scaled back military exercises by the two allies, which North Korea strongly opposes, as part in their diplomatic outreach to leader Kim Jong-un. Mr. Trump and Mr. Moon have met with Kim three times, but both have left office with North Korea’s nuclear arsenal intact, and North Korea has doubled down on its weapons development.
Its previous test, on May 25, involved three ballistic missiles, including what South Korean officials say was a Hwasong-17, its largest known intercontinental ballistic missile. North Korea has tested ICBMs or their components six times since February, despite a 2018 promise from Kim not to carry out such tests, according to South Korean defense officials.
North Korea appears to be trying to develop a variety of nuclear-capable missiles, a goal announced by Kim in January 2021. South Korean intelligence officials say the most recent tests by South Korean North Korea also aims to show confidence that it can overcome the present. wave of Covid-19 cases without internal turmoil or accepting external aid.
North Korea reported what it said was its first Covid-19 outbreak last month, claiming “Maximum State of Emergency” and imposed a nationwide shutdown. It has rejected offers of vaccines from South Korea, the United States and international health organizations, saying the situation is ongoing.controlled and improved. ”
On Sunday, North Korea reported 73,780 new suspected Covid patients, bringing the total to more than four million since the end of April. It has reported only 71 deaths.
Experts have cast considerable doubt on those numbers. Because the North lacks testing kits and labs, it measures its outbreak by the number of people with fever symptoms, not the actual positive test. Even if that uncertainty were to be taken into account, the North’s reported death toll would amount to one of the lowest Covid mortality rates in the world, despite threaded public health system.
