North Korea has recently created an army division in charge of newly developed intermediate-range missiles capable of striking US forces in Japan and Guam, a South Korean news agency said yesterday.
The report came as North Korea stepped up its war rhetoric against the US and South Korea after the allies started annual drills aimed at improving their defense capabilities.
The North’s People’s Army recently launched a division supervising operational deployment of missiles with a range of more than 3,000km that it had developed in recent years, Yonhap news agency reported citing an unidentified South Korean government source.
The missiles could pose a threat to US forces in Japan, Guam and other Pacific areas that are to be redeployed in time of emergency on the Korean Peninsula, Yonhap said. The report, however, didn’t provide further details such as how many missiles the new division possesses and where they are positioned.
South Korea’s Defense Ministry said yesterday it couldn’t confirm the Yonhap report. However, a ministry document published last year showed that the North deployed a new type of medium-range missile believed to be the one it displayed during a military parade in 2007.
If confirmed, the division’s launch could suggest that the North has succeeded in developing more medium-range missiles since 2007 and it needed a bigger unit to manage them, said Ohm Tae-am of the state-run Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul.
The division’s creation would also mean the North has a unit whose primary role is to prevent the US from redeploying its troops in the Pacific to the Korean Peninsula in the event of a conflict, said Baek Seung-joo of the same institute.
North Korea’s missile program and nuclear weapons development program are major regional security concerns.
The North conducted a long-range rocket test in April in violation of a UN Security Council resolution that prohibits the country from engaging in any ballistic missile-related activities.
Yesterday, the North continued its salvo against the US and South Korea over their military drills. About 18,000 US soldiers and an undisclosed number of South Korean troops are taking part in 11 days of drills that began on Monday.
“This cannot be interpreted otherwise than a grave provocation,” the North’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
It said the North will continue to bolster its nuclear capability as long as the US military threats persist.
The ministry, however, said the North is ready for both dialogue and war, a position that contrasts with a military statement on Sunday that the North would break off dialogue with the US in response to the drills.
Authorities have detained three former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TMSC, 台積電) employees on suspicion of compromising classified technology used in making 2-nanometer chips, the Taiwan High Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday. Prosecutors are holding a former TSMC engineer surnamed Chen (陳) and two recently sacked TSMC engineers, including one person surnamed Wu (吳) in detention with restricted communication, following an investigation launched on July 25, a statement said. The announcement came a day after Nikkei Asia reported on the technology theft in an exclusive story, saying TSMC had fired two workers for contravening data rules on advanced chipmaking technology. Two-nanometer wafers are the most
NEW GEAR: On top of the new Tien Kung IV air defense missiles, the military is expected to place orders for a new combat vehicle next year for delivery in 2028 Mass production of Tien Kung IV (Sky Bow IV) missiles is expected to start next year, with plans to order 122 pods, the Ministry of National Defense’s (MND) latest list of regulated military material showed. The document said that the armed forces would obtain 46 pods of the air defense missiles next year and 76 pods the year after that. The Tien Kung IV is designed to intercept cruise missiles and ballistic missiles to an altitude of 70km, compared with the 60km maximum altitude achieved by the Missile Segment Enhancement variant of PAC-3 systems. A defense source said yesterday that the number of
A bipartisan group of US representatives have introduced a draft US-Taiwan Defense Innovation Partnership bill, aimed at accelerating defense technology collaboration between Taiwan and the US in response to ongoing aggression by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The bill was introduced by US representatives Zach Nunn and Jill Tokuda, with US House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman John Moolenaar and US Representative Ashley Hinson joining as original cosponsors, a news release issued by Tokuda’s office on Thursday said. The draft bill “directs the US Department of Defense to work directly with Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense through their respective
Tsunami waves were possible in three areas of Kamchatka in Russia’s Far East, the Russian Ministry for Emergency Services said yesterday after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit the nearby Kuril Islands. “The expected wave heights are low, but you must still move away from the shore,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app, after the latest seismic activity in the area. However, the Pacific Tsunami Warning System in Hawaii said there was no tsunami warning after the quake. The Russian tsunami alert was later canceled. Overnight, the Krasheninnikov volcano in Kamchatka erupted for the first time in 600 years, Russia’s RIA
RSS