North Korea fired “numerous” short-range projectiles toward the sea off its eastern coast, South Korea said, in North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s latest and most provocative signal of frustration with talks with US President Donald Trump.
Initially labeled “missiles,” the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff changed its assessment to “projectiles,” saying that it would take more than a day to fully confirm.
The launches took place at about 9:06am from North Korea’s eastern port of Wonsan and traveled 70km to 200km, it said in an earlier statement.
Photo: Reuters
“Missiles are projectiles, but South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff might be using ‘projectile’ to imply an unguided rocket, like one of North Korea’s older rocket artillery systems,” said Ankit Panda, an adjunct senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists. “This could also be a politicized attempt to make the word ‘missile’ not so prominent, in case that creates the kind of news cycle that Trump doesn’t want.”
South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s spokeswoman condemned the launches in a statement, calling it an action that “goes against” a military agreement reached between the two Koreas in September last year to halt “hostile activities” against each other.
While it was North Korea’s first major test since November 2017, the initial description suggested that the test did not include longer-range weapons that Kim had pledged to refrain from firing.
“We are aware of North Korea’s actions tonight,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. “We will continue to monitor as necessary.”
US National Security Adviser John Bolton briefed Trump about the launch, said a senior administration official, who requested anonymity.
Kim has refrained from tests of nuclear-capable weapons since launching an intercontinental ballistic missile believed capable of reaching the continental US in November 2017 — a moratorium that has underpinned his negotiations with Trump.
While a short-range missile would not necessarily break that pledge, it signals Kim’s frustration with denuclearization talks since Trump’s decision to walk away from a summit in Hanoi in February.
“This is an expected move from North Korea — not too provoking, but urging the US to take a slightly stronger stance than their initial one,” Korean National Diplomatic Academy associate professor Kim Hyun-wook said. “This seems like a message for [US Special Representative] Stephen Biegun’s planned trip to the peninsula” next week.
The Japanese Ministry of Defense said that the nation had not detected any missiles entering its exclusive economic zone and as such, there was no immediate impact to its national security.
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