Wednesday’s launch came two days after the USA and South Korea began their 12-day Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercises, prompting North Korean threats of retaliation for the military drills, which it views as an invasion rehearsal.
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Seoul officials condemned the launch as an “armed protest” against the start of annual South Korean-U.S. military drills that North Korean calls an invasion rehearsal.
The KCNA said Kim praised his engineers for developing the SLBM capability in a “short span of time” and said the results of the test proved “the DPRK joined the front rank of the military powers fully equipped with nuclear attack capability”.
In this undated photo distributed on Thursday, Aug. 25, 2016, by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, visits the site of a submarine-launched missile test at an un.
Two submarine-launched ballistic missiles have exploded in midair this year after flying fewer than 18 miles.
The meeting comes after the Security Council was unable to condemn a missile launch by the North earlier this month that landed near Japan because China wanted the statement to also oppose the planned deployment of a USA missile defence system in South Korea. “We do continue to be concerned by the provocative destabilizing actions of the North Korean regime”.
North Korea’s SLBM launch, the third one this year, appears to have been Pyongyang’s most successful one to date. South Korean media said no land mines had been planted in the area of the truce village of Panmunjom until North Korea placed an unspecified number there last week.
The defection should not be seen as the reason for this missile test – very probably it was already planned in response to the South’s exercises, and North Korea is pursuing its weapons programme at pace – but it fuels the same base fear.
Pyongyang is believed to be acting in retaliation over joint military drills between its South Korean neighbor and the USA which began on Monday.
In the face of the North Korean threat, cooperation among Japan, China and South Korea was more important than ever, Kishida said after his meeting with China’s Wang Yi and South Korea’s Yun Byung-se.
The US mainland and its “operational theater in the Pacific” are now within North Korea’s “striking range”, KCNA quoted Kim as saying.
The DPRK usually responds to regular South Korea-U.S. military drills with weapons tests and fiery warlike rhetoric.
While the ministry said that it can not rule out possibility of the actual deployment taking place sooner, the general assessment of the launch within the military was that it was a politically-motivated “show”.
“We call on North Korea to refrain from actions that further raise tensions in the region and focus instead on taking concrete steps toward fulfilling its commitments and global obligations”, Ross said.
Kim Jong Un’s comments were full of North Korea’s trademark hyperbole, but the facts on the ground are increasingly giving the erratic leader something to brag about.
North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs are a source of regional security concerns.
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The flight distance, which was tracked by South Korea’s military Joint Chiefs of Staff, far exceeded any previous SLBM tests, suggesting significant progress in technical prowess. Beijing warned against the US move at recent U.N. Security Council talks.
