North Korea fired a suspected intercontinental ballistic missile early Wednesday, Seoul’s military said, just a day after the president Joe Biden Ended his first trip to Asia as a US leader.
Seoul said at least three missiles, including a suspected ICBM, were fired from Pyongyang’s Sunan area, where the nuclear-armed regime has recently carried out multiple weapons tests.
Seoul’s military said South Korea and the United States conducted live fire of a “land-to-land missile drill” in response to “suspicious ICBM and missile provocations” by North Korea.
“Today’s continued launch of a suspected intercontinental ballistic missile and short-range ballistic missile by North Korea is an illegal act in direct violation of UN Security Council resolutions,” Seoul’s government said after a National Security Council meeting.
South Korea’s new president, Yoon Suk-yol, overseeing the meeting, said the launches – one of about 20 tests conducted by Pyongyang so far this year – were “serious provocations” that would threaten peace on the Korean peninsula and the international community. were in danger.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that it “detected firing of ballistic missiles launched toward the East Sea from the Sunan area at approximately 0600 (2100 GMT), 0637 and 0642”, which is part of the Sea of Japan. Referring to. ,
“The first ballistic missile (suspect ICBM) had a range of approximately 360 km (225 mi) and an altitude of about 540 km,” Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
The second ballistic missile “disappeared at an altitude of 20 km” and the third – a suspected short-range ballistic missile – traveled about 760 km at an altitude of about 60 km.
“The details are being thoroughly analyzed by South Korean and US intelligence,” the statement said.
– be tough –
Wednesday’s launch is the latest in a weapons test by Pyongyang this year to defy sanctions, including full-range test-firing intercontinental ballistic missiles for the first time since 2017.
The latest apparent test comes just days after Biden left South Korea, after US and South Korean officials warned that Kim could conduct a nuclear test while Biden was in the area.
While in South Korea, Biden joined Yoon for talks, which included discussing expanded military exercises to counter Kim’s saber rattle.
The joint exercises with North Korea were called off in an era of high-profile but ultimately unsuccessful diplomacy, because of the Covid and for Biden and Yoon’s predecessors, Donald Trump and Moon Jae-in.
Any build-up of forces or expansion of joint military exercises could anger Pyongyang, which sees the exercises as a rehearsal for an invasion.
On his last day in Seoul, Biden told reporters he only had one short message for Kim: “Hello. Period.”
And he said the United States was “ready for whatever North Korea does.”
-Covid and missiles –
Kim recently doubled down on his program of military modernization.
Despite battling the recent Covid-19 outbreak, new satellite imagery indicates that the North has resumed construction on the long-dormant nuclear reactor.
Earlier this month, North Korea confirmed its first Omicron cases in Pyongyang, and the virus has since ripped through its uninsured population of 25 million.
North Korean state media said on Wednesday that more than 3 million people are sick with a “fever”, with 68 deaths since the outbreak began in late April.
Seoul’s Secretary of State Park Jin and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke on the phone after the launch on Wednesday, the State Department said.
The pair said it was “deeply regrettable” that North Korea is “using its main financial resources for nuclear and missile development, not quarantine and improving people’s livelihoods” in the outbreak.
North Korea The missile tests have continued since the declaration of a national emergency over the COVID outbreak, although state media have not reported on the launch, as is usually the case.
This story has been published without modification in text from a wire agency feed. Only the title has been changed.