North Korea fired six short-range projectiles into the sea off its east coast yesterday, South Korean officials said, just hours after the UN Security Council approved the toughest sanctions on the North in two decades for its recent nuclear test and long-range rocket launch.
The firings also came shortly after the South Korean National Assembly passed its first legislation on human rights in North Korea.
The North Korean projectiles, fired from the eastern coastal town of Wonsan, flew between 100km and 150km before landing in the sea, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
Photo: AP
It was not immediately known exactly what North Korea fired, and the projectiles could be missiles, artillery or rockets, the South Korean Ministry of Defense said.
North Korea routinely test-fires missiles and rockets, but often conducts weapons launches when angered at international condemnation.
Yesterday’s firings were seen as a “low-level” response to the UN sanctions, with North Korea unlikely to launch any major provocation until its landmark ruling Workers’ Party convention in May, according to Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
North Korea has not issued an official reaction to the new UN sanctions, but Pyongyang residents interviewed by The Associated Press said they believe their country can fight off any sanctions.
“No kind of sanctions will ever work on us, because we’ve lived under US sanctions for more than half a century,” Song Hyo-il said. “And in the future, we’re going to build a powerful and prosperous country here, relying on our own development.”
North Korean state media earlier said that the imposition of new sanctions would be a “grave provocation” that shows “extreme” US hostility against the country.
The UN 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 the North; and the expulsion of North Korean diplomats who engage in “illicit activities.”
In Beijing, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Hong Lei (洪磊) said China hoped the UN sanctions would be implemented “comprehensively and seriously,” while harm to ordinary North Koreans would be avoided.
Russia said it hoped that the North Korea would “draw the right conclusions” and resume talks “to settle the nuclear problem on the Korean Peninsula.”
In addition, EU Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini said the bloc would update its sanctions regime against the North.
Just before the UN sanctions were unanimously adopted, the South Korean National Assembly passed a bill that would establish a center tasked with collecting, archiving and publishing information about human rights in North Korea.
It is required to transfer that information to the South Korean Ministry of Justice, a step parliamentary officials say would provide legal grounds to punish rights violators in North Korea when the two Koreas eventually reunify.
North Korea had warned that enactment of the law would result in “miserable ruin.”
In 2014, a UN commission of inquiry on North Korea published a report laying out abuses such as a harsh system of political prison camps holding up to 120,000 people.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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