SEOUL – North Korea fired two ballistic missiles into the sea today, according to South Korea’s military, as China’s foreign minister visited Seoul and days after Pyongyang said it had successfully tested new long-range cruise missiles.
Beijing is the North’s key diplomatic ally and main partner for trade and aid, although Pyongyang is under a self-imposed blockade after closing its borders early last year to protect itself against the coronavirus pandemic.
Nuclear-armed North Korea had fired “two unidentified ballistic missiles” from its central inland area into the sea off its east coast, Seoul’s joint chiefs of staff said in a statement.
“South Korean and United States intelligence agencies are conducting detailed analysis,” they added, without immediately giving details of the missiles’ range.
The launch came as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Seoul for talks with his South Korean counterpart.
Speaking before the news emerged, Wang hoped that all countries would help “peace and stability on the Korean peninsula”, the Yonhap news agency reported.
“For example, not only North Korea but also other countries are engaging in military activities,” he added.
“Having said this, we all have to work together toward the resumption of dialogue.”
Today’s launches came days after the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that it had test-fired a new “long-range cruise missile” over the weekend, calling it a “strategic weapon of great significance”.
Pictures in the Rodong Sinmun newspaper on Monday showed a missile exiting one of five tubes on a launch vehicle in a ball of flame and a missile in horizontal flight.
Such a weapon will represent a marked advance in North Korea’s weapons technology, analysts said, better able to avoid defence systems to deliver a warhead across South Korea or Japan – both of them US allies.
The missiles fired at the weekend travelled 1,500km, on two-hour flight paths – including figure-of-eight patterns – above North Korea and its territorial waters to hit their targets, according to KCNA.
North Korea is under international sanctions for its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes, which it says it needs to defend itself against a US invasion.
However, Pyongyang is not banned from developing cruise missiles, which it has tested previously.
The US, Japanese, and South Korean envoys on North Korea met in Tokyo earlier this week when Washington’s representative Sung Kim reiterated: “We hope that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) will respond positively to our multiple offers to meet without preconditions.
The US is willing to “address areas of humanitarian concerns regardless of progress on denuclearisation”, in keeping with international standards for access and monitoring, he added.
Nuclear talks with the US have been stalled since the collapse of a 2019 summit in Hanoi between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and then-president Donald Trump over sanctions relief – and what Pyongyang will be willing to give up in return.
North Korea’s weapons programmes have made rapid progress under Jong-un, but it has not carried out a nuclear test or an intercontinental ballistic missile launch since 2017. – AFP, September 15, 2021
