North Korea yesterday said that leader Kim Jong-un supervised test-firings of an unspecified new weapons system, which extended a streak of launches that are seen as an attempt to build leverage ahead of negotiations with the US, while driving a wedge between the US and South Korea.
The report by North Korean state media came hours after US President Donald Trump said that Kim had expressed a desire to meet again to start nuclear negotiations after the end of ongoing US-South Korea military exercises, and that he apologized for the flurry of recent short-range ballistic launches that rattled US allies in the region.
In a separate statement, the North Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs blasted the South for continuing to host military drills with the US, and said that future dialogue would be held strictly between Pyongyang and Washington, and not between the Koreas.
Photo: EPA-EFE / KCNA
South Korea’s military on Saturday said the North had fired what appeared to be two short-range ballistic missiles.
It said they flew about 400km before landing in waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.
Kim expressed “great satisfaction” over the launches, which the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said verified that the new weapons system is able to perform as designed.
The North’s official Rodong Sinmun published several photographs that showed Kim watching from an observation post and what appeared to be a missile soaring from a mobile launcher.
KCNA did not specify whether the weapons were ballistic missiles or rocket artillery, but said they were developed to suit the North’s “terrain condition” and provide “advantageous tactical character different from existing weapons systems.”
Kim Dong-yub, an analyst at Seoul’s Institute for Far Eastern Studies, said the North’s photographs and South Korea’s flight data of the launches suggest that the North tested a new weapons system that is different from the short-range ballistic missiles it repeatedly fired in recent weeks.
The fifth round of weapons launches in less than three weeks is seen as a protest of the slow pace of nuclear talks and continuance of the joint military drills, as well as a bid to pressure Seoul to try harder to coax major concessions from the US on Pyongyang’s behalf.
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