(Seoul) North Korea launched a projectile on Saturday, presented as a “ballistic missile” by Seoul, continuing its series of armament tests four days before the presidential election in South Korea.
Updated yesterday at 11:15 p.m.
Pyongyang conducted seven weapons tests in January, including its most powerful missile since 2017, before suspending firing during the Winter Olympics in Beijing.
On February 28, North Korea announced that it had carried out a test of “great importance” for the development of a reconnaissance satellite, Seoul speaking for its part of a ballistic missile.
Despite draconian international sanctions, Pyongyang has so far rejected all offers of dialogue since the breakdown in 2019 of talks between leader Kim Yong Un and then-US President Donald Trump.
The country has since redoubled its efforts to modernize its military, threatening in January to break the self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile testing.
South Korea’s military said on Saturday it detected “a ballistic missile launched eastbound from the Sunan area at around 8:48 a.m. (6:48 p.m. ET).”
Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said the missile flew “at a maximum altitude of about 550 kilometers and a range of about 300 kilometers”.
He deplored the “extreme frequency” of weapons tests by Pyongyang since the beginning of the year, saying they constitute “a threat to the region… and are absolutely unacceptable. »
This test comes four days before the presidential election in South Korea, Pyongyang thus seeming to want to express its “displeasure” with regard to outgoing President Moon Jae-in, according to analysts.
“It looks like Kim Jong-un feels Moon Jae-in didn’t do much after the failed Hanoi summit” between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump in 2019, according to Ahn Chan-il, specialist in North Korean studies.
Pyongyang has clearly “decided to prioritize its own military agenda, regardless of what South Korea thinks”, he added.
Profiting from Ukraine
Tensions with North Korea no longer seem to be a major issue in the South Korean presidential election, according to analysts who believe that income inequality and youth unemployment are at the heart of voters’ concerns.
If Moon Jae-In’s Democratic Party loses the election on Wednesday, Seoul could initiate a change in policy towards its northern neighbor.
One of the two main candidates, former prosecutor Yoon Suk-yeol, the candidate of the People’s Power Party (PPP, right), threatened to carry out a preemptive strike against Pyongyang, if necessary. nuclear weapon.
Analysts say North Korea is seeking to take advantage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to conduct new tests as the United States focuses its attention on the conflict.
At the end of the Cold War, Ukraine had large stockpiles of nuclear weapons and gave up its arsenal in the 1990s.
“With these tests, North Korea seems to be saying that it is different from Ukraine, and wants to remind the world that it has its own nuclear weapons,” Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University, told AFP. University of North Korean Studies.
“This is a new demand for Washington to end the so-called ‘hostile’ policies against Pyongyang,” he said.
Last month, Pyongyang accused Washington of being the “root cause of the Ukraine crisis”, saying in a statement that Washington “interferes” in the internal affairs of other countries when it suits it.
Analysts believe Pyongyang could use the most important date on its political calendar, April 15, to carry out a major weapons test.
This date marks the anniversary (110 years this year) of the birth of Kim Il-sung, founder of North Korea and grandfather of the current leader Kim Jong-un.
Recent satellite images suggest that the North Korean regime is preparing a large military parade to show off its weapons for the occasion.
“Pyongyang is likely to focus on testing its reconnaissance satellites and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) until April,” said Cheong Seong-chang of the Sejong Institute’s Center for North Korea Studies. .