SEOUL (Parliament politics Magazine) – The South Korean military reported that North Korea launched two more ballistic missiles, marking the fourth launch of this nature this week as joint military exercises between Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington get more intense.
The early Saturday launch comes after Kamala Harris, the US vice president, visited the area this week and for the first time in five years on Friday, the fleets of South Korea, the United States, and Japan conducted trilateral anti-submarine exercises.Â
Harris visited the heavily guarded demilitarised zone that separates the peninsula on Thursday while in Seoul in an effort to highlight her nation’s “ironclad” commitment to South Korea’s defence against the North.
Inter-Korean negotiations have been at a standstill for a while, but Pyongyang has intensified its banned weapons programme, conducting a record-breaking flurry of tests this year and amending its laws to declare itself an “irreversible” nuclear power.
The South Korean military stated, “two short-range missiles were detected between 0645 and 0703 fired from the Sunan area in Pyongyang into the East Sea.” The East Sea is also called the Sea of Japan.Â
In a statement, the joint chiefs of staff in Seoul said that the missiles “flew roughly 350km at an altitude of 30km at speed of Mach 6” and described the launches as a major provocation.
The missiles had landed outside the exclusive economic zones of Japan, Tokyo stated, confirming the launch.
The missiles looked to have flown in unusual trajectories, Toshiro Ino, Japan’s vice minister of defence said.
Experts explain, the missiles’ erratic trajectories show they could manoeuvre while in flight, making them more difficult to intercept and track.
Using the official acronym for North Korea, the US Indo-Pacific Command stated that the most recent launch highlights the destabilising consequences of the DPRK’s illicit WMD and ballistic missile programs.
North Korea launched short-range ballistic missiles on Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday, including a few hours after the vice president left South Korea, to mark Harris’s visit to Seoul.
To assist defend South Korea from the North, Washington maintains 28,500 troops there.
President Yoon Suk-yeol of Seoul, whose tenure started in May, has increased joint drills between the two nations, which they stress are solely defensive.
The nuclear-powered USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier was sent to South Korea from the US to perform a sizable joint naval drill just before Harris arrived in Seoul.
North Korea is enraged by these exercises because it perceives them as invasion drills.
Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, stated that North Korea’s short-range ballistic tests “are less critical than a nuclear test but still violate UN security council resolutions.” The timing was “provocative,” he said.
He claimed that North Korea was “quickly modernising its arsenal and exploiting a globe split by US-China rivalry and Russia’s annexation of more Ukrainian territory.”
Kim Jong-un, the North Korean ruler, is reportedly planning to conduct another nuclear test, the South Korean and US authorities say who have been issuing warnings for months.
The next nuclear test by North Korea could occur between the forthcoming party congress in China on October 16 and the US midterm elections on November 7, the South’s spy service informed on Wednesday.
North Korea, which is subject to numerous UN sanctions because of its weapons programmes, usually carefully plans the timing of its nuclear tests to maximise their geopolitical impact.
Since 2006, the isolated regime has conducted six nuclear weapons tests, the most recent of which was in 2017.
