North Korea launched a ballistic missile on Monday, the military reported from Seoul, where US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is meeting senior officials and attending a democracy summit.
“North Korea fired an unspecified ballistic missile toward the East Sea,” also known as the Sea of Japan, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
Japan also confirmed the shot. According to its coast guard, the projectile appears to have fallen. The United States, for its part, condemned this provocation by North Korea.
“These launches, like previous ballistic missile launches in recent years, are in violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions,” a State Department spokesperson said, emphasizing that these launches “threaten » North Korea’s neighbors and “undermining regional security”.
This ballistic missile launch is the second of its kind carried out by Pyongyang in 2024, after that, on January 14, of a machine equipped with a hypersonic warhead. It comes days after the end of joint US-South Korean military exercises.
Mr. Blinken landed in South Korea on Sunday afternoon to participate in the third Democracy Summit, an initiative of United States President Joe Biden, which Seoul is hosting from Monday to Wednesday. Government officials, NGOs and members of civil society are present.
The American Secretary of State must also take advantage of his trip to discuss with his South Korean counterpart Cho Tae-yul ways to strengthen the alliance between Washington and Seoul, while the two countries seek to improve their policy of ” extended deterrence” facing the North.
” High price “
On Thursday, Seoul and Washington ended their annual large-scale “Freedom Shield” exercises, which included missile interception and air assaults. The number of troops participating has been doubled compared to 2023.
Pyongyang warned in early March that the United States and South Korea would pay a “high price” for the maneuvers before announcing that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had overseen a large-scale artillery exercise including, according to him, border units “which put the enemy’s capital within their reach”.
Seoul is a key ally of Washington in the region. The United States is stationing some 27,000 American troops in South Korea to help protect itself against the nuclear-armed North.
Coming to power in 2022, conservative South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has strengthened his ties with the White House and sought to move closer to Japan, the former colonial power on the Korean peninsula, in the face of threats from Pyongyang.
Since the start of the year, Pyongyang has designated Seoul as its “main enemy”, closed agencies dedicated to reunification and inter-Korean dialogue and threatened to go to war for any violation of its territory “even if only of 0.001 millimeter.