North Korea yesterday fired several cruise missiles toward its western sea, South Korea’s military said, marking the second launch this week, apparently in protest against the docking of a nuclear-armed US submarine in South Korea.
While adding to its barrage of missile launches in the past few months, North Korea remained silent for a fifth day on the fate of a US soldier who bolted into the North across the Korean border this week.
The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said the launches were detected from about 4am, but did not immediately report how many missiles were fired or how far they flew.
Photo: EPA-EFE
It said that the US and South Korean militaries were closely analyzing the launches.
North Korea in the past few years has been testing newly developed cruise missiles it describes as “strategic,” implying an intent to arm them with nuclear weapons.
Experts say the main mission of those weapons would include striking naval assets and ports. Designed to fly like small airplanes and travel along landscape that would make them harder to detect by radar, cruise missiles are among a growing collection of North Korean weapons aimed at overwhelming missile defenses in the South.
On Tuesday, US soldier Private Travis King sprinted across the border into North Korea while on a tour of an inter-Korean truce village.
North Korea’s state media has yet to comment on King and has not responded to US requests to clarify where he is being kept and what his condition is.
US officials have expressed concern about King’s well-being, considering North Korea’s previous rough treatment of some US detainees.
Some experts say the North might try to use King for propaganda or as a bargaining chip to coax political and security concessions from Washington, possibly tying his release with the US cutting back its military activities with South Korea.
Meanwhile, the G7, EU and three other countries are urging China to expel oil tankers from its waters that appear to be taking fuel to North Korea in defiance of UN sanctions, according to a letter seen by Agence France-Presse on Friday.
“We have concerns regarding the continuing presence of multiple oil tankers ... that use your territorial waters in Sansha Bay as refuge to facilitate their trade of sanctioned petroleum products to the DPRK,” the letter said, using initials for the North’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Ambassadors from the G7 nations — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US — signed the letter. Also signing were envoys from the EU, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
In the letter, the ambassadors said they “would like to provide your government with additional information and satellite imagery that clearly indicates these practices continued to occur within China’s jurisdiction in 2022 and have continued in 2023.”
“We reiterate our previous request that China inspect the vessels for evidence of illicit oil smuggling, deny them all services, and ultimately expel them from your waters as quickly as possible,” it added.
Additional reporting by AFP
A Chinese aircraft carrier group entered Japan’s economic waters over the weekend, before exiting to conduct drills involving fighter jets, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said yesterday. The Liaoning aircraft carrier, two missile destroyers and one fast combat supply ship sailed about 300km southwest of Japan’s easternmost island of Minamitori on Saturday, a ministry statement said. It was the first time a Chinese aircraft carrier had entered that part of Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), a ministry spokesman said. “We think the Chinese military is trying to improve its operational capability and ability to conduct operations in distant areas,” the spokesman said. China’s growing
Nine retired generals from Taiwan, Japan and the US have been invited to participate in a tabletop exercise hosted by the Taipei School of Economics and Political Science Foundation tomorrow and Wednesday that simulates a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan in 2030, the foundation said yesterday. The five retired Taiwanese generals would include retired admiral Lee Hsi-min (李喜明), joined by retired US Navy admiral Michael Mullen and former chief of staff of the Japan Self-Defense Forces general Shigeru Iwasaki, it said. The simulation aims to offer strategic insights into regional security and peace in the Taiwan Strait, it added. Foundation chair Huang Huang-hsiung
PUBLIC WARNING: The two students had been tricked into going to Hong Kong for a ‘high-paying’ job, which sent them to a scam center in Cambodia Police warned the public not to trust job advertisements touting high pay abroad following the return of two college students over the weekend who had been trafficked and forced to work at a cyberscam center in Cambodia. The two victims, surnamed Lee (李), 18, and Lin (林), 19, were interviewed by police after landing in Taiwan on Saturday. Taichung’s Chingshui Police Precinct said in a statement yesterday that the two students are good friends, and Lin had suspended her studies after seeing the ad promising good pay to work in Hong Kong. Lee’s grandfather on Thursday reported to police that Lee had sent
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
RSS