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
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