This latest launch comes 12 days after North Korea fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), which flew some 500 kilometers eastward on July 24, landing in waters controlled by Japan.
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North Korea’s continued nuclear program has prompted the worldwide community to impose a series of sanctions on the country – but the nation “remains defiant”, Elise says.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the three ballistic missiles, all believed to be Rodongs, were launched from the western North Korean town of Hwangju and flew across the country before splashing into the sea.
Such tests are fairly common when global attention is turned to Northeast Asia, and this one came as world leaders gathered in eastern China for the G-20 summit of advanced and emerging economies.
“It is considered part of the North’s armed protests aimed at maintaining military tension on the Korean peninsula by showing off its nuclear and missile abilities”, it said, adding the North was taking advantage of the G-20 summit to gain attention.
Since the Rodong has a range of 1,300 kilometers, including the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, which hosted the G-20 summit, North Korea may have hoped to impress the world with its missile attack capability, analysts said.
All three missiles Monday fell in Japan’s exclusive economic zone, the 200-nautical-mile offshore area where a nation has sovereign rights for exploring and exploiting resources, according to Tokyo’s Defense Ministry.
“South Korea, Japan and the US, whose leaders are all in China at the G-20 meeting, immediately condemned the latest test by North Korea”, Elise says. President Barack Obama was in China meeting with the leaders of France and Germany around the time of the launch, according to The Associated Press. South Korean President Park Geun-hye “pleaded” with Chinese President Xi Jinping to drop his opposition to her plan to install a missile defense system built by Lockheed Martin Corp.
The latest firing won’t help the push by Xi to get Park to scrap the planned deployment of a powerful US anti-missile system in the South.
The U.S. and South Korea were still investigating, but the launches were clearly a violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions banning the North’s use of ballistic missile technology, the statement said.
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Lockheed, however, may eventually benefit from North Korea’s latest launches if the South increases the size of its order or even if it can parlay China’s fears about the system into a selling point to other customers.
