North Korea launched a short-range ballistic missile toward its east coast early Friday and raised warplanes near the border with South Korea, further fueling hostility over recent weapons tests by Pyongyang.
The South Korean military also found that North Korea had fired about 170 artillery rounds from the eastern and western coastal areas near the border and that shells had landed in maritime buffer zones established between North and South Korea under a 2018 military agreement to reduce tensions, reports ABC News.
North Korea’s actions suggest that it will continue a provocative series of weapons tests designed to bolster its nuclear capability. Some experts say North Korea will want the United States and other countries to recognize it as a nuclear power by lifting economic sanctions and making other concessions.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff released a statement saying the missile launched from North Korea’s capital region at 1:49 a.m. Friday. The statement said that the artillery attacks from the North were in clear violation of the 2018 agreement, which established buffer zones along land and sea borders and no-fly zones over the border to prevent clashes, and that the military had reinforced its surveillance and defense positions in close cooperation with the USA.
In response to the intensification of missile launches, South Korea on Friday imposed unilateral sanctions against North Korea for the first time in five years, targeting 15 North Korean citizens and 16 organizations suspected of being involved in illegal activities to finance the North Korean nuclear missile program.
Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada said the missile was flying on a “wrong” trajectory, a possible reference to North Korea’s highly maneuverable KN-23 missile, modeled after Russia’s Iskander.
The South Korean and Japanese military estimated that the missile traveled 650 to 700 kilometers at a maximum altitude of 50 kilometers and landed in the waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.
The US Indo-Pacific Command said North Korea’s actions do not pose an immediate threat to US personnel or allied territory, adding that US commitments to protect South Korea and Japan remain “unbreakable.”
