US Ambassador Samantha Power said the latest missile launches underscored the importance of implementing the new sanctions resolution, which targets North Korea’s mining, trade and financial sectors. The letters on the screen read “The missile [launched yesterday] puts all of South Korea and part of Japan within striking distance”.
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The U.S. special representative for North Korean policy, Sung Kim, who is visiting Seoul, said Monday that North Korea “should refrain from all provocative actions, including missile tests, which are clearly in violation of Security Council resolutions”.
The medium range ballistic missile launches come as the United States and South Korean are in the middle of two annual military exercises.
The launch is the fourth so far this year, following the test firing of a new 300 millimeter rocket artillery system on March 4, two Scud missiles on March 10 and another short-range missile launch on March 17.
South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency first reported a missile had been fired, but they later clarified that projectiles had been fired.
Adopted in early March, the United Nations sanctions call for the mandatory inspection of all cargo going in and out of the North and a ban on the country’s exports of coal and other mineral resources, a key source of hard currency for the cash-strapped regime.
“Our military is keeping close tabs on the situation and standing by with a heightened defense posture”, the JCS said.
The North Korean missile fired may not be a Rodong but a long-range missile whose launch angle was altered so that it didn’t fly its full range, said Kwon Sejin, a professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea.
North Korea’s nuclear programme: How advanced is it?
The secretive state has threatened to launch pre-emptive strikes against Seoul and the USA in recent weeks – warning its nuclear missiles could burn Manhattan “to ashes”.
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“Many of North Korea’s systematic human rights violations deliberately underwrite the government’s nuclear program, including the forced labor carried out by tens of thousands of women and children”, said Power.
