The UN Security Council has slapped a series of sanctions against the hermit state that ban North Korea from conducting ballistic missile tests.
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North Korea said Wednesday that its the day before conducted simulations of nuclear strikes against American military targets in South Korea, the official news agency KCNA North Korean.
The United States pledged Tuesday to put unrelenting pressure on the “leadership of North Korea” after the communist nation carried out banned ballistic missile launches in defiance of global pressure.
The U.S. military was quoted as saying by Reuters that it also detected launches of what it believed were two Scud missiles and one Rodong, a home-grown missile based on Soviet-era Scud technology.
South Korea has begun talks with its biggest ally, the US, about the deployment of Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, anti-missile system as a defence and deterrence measure on the north.
Two of them flew about 500 to 600 kilometers (310 to 375 miles), displaying a sufficient range to reach entire South Korea, JCS spokesman Jeon Ha Gyu said.
“The idea seems to be to signal that (U.S.) war plans can not succeed because if we activated them, the North Koreans would strike as we made the attempt”, said Joshua Pollack, editor of the USA -based Nonproliferation Review.
The U.S. Strategic Command said the launches posed no risk to the United States, however.
The Korean People’s Army (KPA) said in a statement that the US military forces in South Korea will be the first targets of any attack, followed by South Korean “puppet” troops.
The missiles were launched toward the east from somewhere in the North’s western region of Hwangju, according to the South’s military officials.
Last month, the U.S. Treasury Department also designated the North as a “primary money laundering concern”, a powerful sanction created to cut off the provocative regime from the worldwide banking system for defiantly pursuing nuclear and missile development.
Seoul and Washington say they need the THAAD system to better deal with what they call increasing North Korean threats in the aftermath of its fourth nuclear test and long-range rocket launch earlier this year.
North Korea on July 11 responded by threatening to launch a retaliatory strike against the THAAD deployment by turning the South “into a sea of fire and a pile of ashes”.
“What is clear is that North Korea is isolated like never before”.
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United Nations resolutions prohibit North Korea from developing ballistic missile technology.
