(Seoul) North Korea fired several cruise missiles towards the Yellow Sea on Wednesday, the South Korean army announced, at a time when tensions between Seoul and Pyongyang are at their height.
Pyongyang has test-fired a new generation of strategic cruise missiles, the North Korean state news agency KCNA confirmed, without specifying the number of missiles tested.
The North Korean announcement came hours after the South Korean military said the North had fired several cruise missiles toward the Yellow Sea west of the Korean Peninsula.
“Our military detected several cruise missiles launched by North Korea towards the Yellow Sea” around 7 a.m. Wednesday (5 p.m. Eastern Time Tuesday), the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a press release.
“The detailed specifications are closely analyzed by South Korean and American intelligence services,” he added.
Tests of cruise missiles, which fly in the atmosphere, do not fall under UN sanctions on North Korea. And this unlike ballistic missiles, whose trajectory takes place mainly in space, and nuclear weapons.
These shots come as South Korea is conducting an infiltration exercise for its special forces off its east coast until Thursday, “in light of serious security concerns” with the North, according to the South’s navy. Korean.
“We will accomplish our mission to deeply infiltrate enemy territory and completely neutralize it, regardless of the circumstances,” the exercise commander said in a statement.
Tensions between the two Koreas have sharply worsened in recent months. The two enemy countries renounced agreements concluded in 2018 to prevent armed incidents, strengthened military assets on the border and carried out live ammunition artillery exercises near each other’s territory.
War threats
Last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said the South was his country’s “main enemy.” He disbanded government agencies dedicated to reunification and contacts with the South, and threatened to declare war if his neighbor encroached on his territory “even by 0.001 mm.”
He also called for constitutional changes allowing the North to “occupy” Seoul in the event of war, according to the official KCNA news agency.
At the end of December, Kim Jong-un ordered the acceleration of military preparations for a “war” that could “be launched at any time”. He denounced a “persistent and uncontrollable crisis situation”, according to him initiated by Seoul and Washington with their joint military exercises in the region.
The tone also rose a notch in the South, where conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol warned that Seoul would respond “several times stronger” in the event of provocation, highlighting the “overwhelming response capabilities” of its army. .
Seoul and Washington have repeatedly warned that any attack by Pyongyang would inevitably lead to the destruction of its regime.
“If the Kim Jong-un regime makes the worst choice of starting a war, you will have to become the invisible force that protects South Korea, […] eliminate enemy leaders as quickly as possible and put an end to their regime,” South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik said on Wednesday while visiting an air base where stealth fighter jets operate.
In recent months, North Korea has increased its testing of weapons banned by the UN.
In early January, it launched a solid-fueled hypersonic missile and fired live ammunition artillery near the maritime border with the South, triggering evacuation orders on several South Korean islands near the North’s coast. Koreans. Seoul responded with counter-exercises in the same region, on the west coast of the peninsula.
Finally, on Friday, Pyongyang announced that it had tested an “undersea nuclear weapons system” in response to naval maneuvers carried out by South Korea, the United States and Japan in the waters south of the peninsula.
North Korea also managed to put a spy satellite into orbit at the end of 2023 after having received, according to Seoul, technological aid from Russia, in exchange for deliveries of weapons for the war in Ukraine.