North Korea and South Korea yesterday tested ballistic missiles hours apart.
South Korea’s presidential office said in a statement that the country conducted its first underwater-launched ballistic missile test.
It said that the domestically built missile flew from a submarine and hit its designated target.
The statement said the weapon is meant to help South Korea deter external threats — an apparent reference to North Korea, which tested two short-range ballistic missile earlier in the day.
Those launches came two days after Pyongyang said it fired a newly developed cruise missile, its first weapons test in six months.
Experts say that the North Korean launches are an effort to apply pressure on the US in the hopes of winning relief from sanctions aimed at persuading it to abandon its nuclear arsenal.
US-led talks on the issue have been stalled for more than two years and in the meantime tensions have been rising on the Korean Peninsula.
Meanwhile, observers say that South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s government, which has been pursuing reconciliation with North Korea, might have taken action to appear tougher in response to criticism that it is too soft on the North.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said that Pyongyang’s launches “threaten the peace and safety of Japan and the region, and are absolutely outrageous.”
The US Indo-Pacific Command said that the move “highlights the destabilizing impact of [North Korea’s] illicit weapons program,” although it did not pose an immediate threat to the US.
The South Korean test will likely infuriate the North, which has often accused its rival of hypocrisy for introducing modern weapons while calling for talks between the divided countries.
South Korea’s military said that the North Korean ballistic missiles flew about 800km before landing in the water between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.
The launches are a breach of UN Security Council resolutions that bar North Korea from engaging in any ballistic missile activity.
Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said that Pyongyang’s tests appeared to be of an improved version of a short-range missile it tested in March.
The weapon is likely modeled on Russia’s Iskander missile, whose flattened-out, low-altitude flight makes it hard to intercept, Kim said.
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