North Korea fires ballistic missile, fueling fears of Pyongyang’s hardening

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has described South Korea as the country’s “main enemy.”

This comes against a backdrop of concerns about a hardening of Pyongyang’s position. North Korea fired a ballistic missile on Sunday January 14, the South Korean army announced, a few days after live ammunition artillery exercises. “Our military detected a ballistic missile, presumed to be of intermediate range, launched from the Pyongyang region towards the East Sea at around 2:55 p.m.” (6:55 a.m. Paris), South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement, referring to an area also known as the Sea of ​​Japan.

The statement gave no further details, specifying that Seoul, Washington and Tokyo were analyzing the shot. “Our military remains ready by closely sharing launch information with the United States and Japan,” he specifies. The Japanese coast guard reported a “object, potentially a ballistic missile, launched from North Korea”, citing information from the country’s Defense Ministry, asking ships to be careful. Shortly before the shooting on Wednesday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un described South Korea as the “main enemy” from the country. A comment that marks a change in tone in North Korean politics and suggests that Pyongyang will adopt a tougher stance in the future, according to analysts.

The last missile launched by North Korea, on December 18, was a Hwasong-18 solid-fuel ICBM-class missile, the most advanced it has, fired into the Sea of ​​Japan. In early January, North Korea also carried out artillery exercises with live ammunition on its western coast, near South Korean islands where the civilian population was called to take shelter.