North Korea has fired five short-range projectiles into the Sea of Japan, South Korean officials said Monday.
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Diplomats said the United States plans to raise the issue of North Korea missile launch at a Security Council meeting later on Friday.
It’s the latest in a series of missile launches by the North since South Korea and the US began annual military drills.
Besides the sanctions, North Korea’s latest firings appear to be a response to USA and South Korean joint military exercises. According to a government source Sunday, Seoul sent a letter to the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization, in which it calls North Korea’s launches “dangerous”, as the regime gave no notice prior to the tests.
This undated picture released from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency on Sunday shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (centre) inspecting landing and anti-landing exercises of the Korean People’s Army at an undisclosed location in North Korea. The U.S. and South Korea also have been taking part in military drills that North Korea has complained are in preparation for an invasion of the North.
The new sanctions include mandatory inspections of cargo leaving and entering North Korea by land, sea or air; a ban on all sales or transfers of small arms and light weapons to Pyongyang; and expulsion of diplomats from the North who engage in “illicit activities”.
The U.N. has been urging all member nations to reinforce these sanctions, in attempts to gain North Korea’s cooperation concerning the ban on ballistic missile testing. In 2014 alone, North Korea fired 90 ballistic missiles and rockets over eight occasions, the South Korean Defense Ministry said in 2015.
At a time of great tension on the divided mainland, they are here to train with the South Korean military in choppy, freezing waters to the east of the Korean Peninsula.
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Analyst Lee Choon Geun at South Korea’s state-funded Science and Technology Policy Institute said the North can probably place nuclear warheads on its shorter-range Scuds and medium-range Rodong missiles, which would put South Korea and Japan under its striking range.
