(SEOUL) North Korea fired at least one ballistic missile on Monday, the South Korean military said, the latest in a series of weapons tests in recent weeks.
“North Korea fired an unidentified ballistic missile towards the East Sea,” the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said, using the Korean name for the Sea of Japan.
Japan’s Defense Ministry also said “a suspected ballistic missile was fired”, with the coast guard saying the craft had probably already fallen.
The launch comes as Seoul and Washington conduct a joint amphibious landing exercise, just days after concluding their largest joint military drills in five years on Thursday.
Pyongyang regards all these maneuvers as rehearsals for an invasion. He said Friday that these recent exercises, dubbed “Freedom Shield”, constituted training for an “occupation” of North Korea.
North Korea’s military responded by carrying out its own military exercises, including testing what it billed as a new ‘underwater nuclear attack drone’, and launching its second intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) of the year.
Analysts had previously estimated that North Korea would probably use these exercises as a pretext to carry out new missile launches, or even a nuclear test.
North Korea’s state-run KCNA news agency reported on Friday that the “underwater nuclear attack drone” drill, personally supervised by leader Kim Jong-un, was conducted “for the purpose of warning the enemy against a real nuclear crisis”.
The purpose of this weapon is to “stealth into operational waters and produce a large-scale radioactive tsunami […] to destroy enemy naval attack groups and key operational ports,” KCNA added.
The agency also claimed that Pyongyang on Wednesday fired strategic cruise missiles “equipped with a test warhead simulating a nuclear warhead”.
“Irreversible” nuclear power
Analysts have cast doubt on North Korea’s claims, adding, however, that it is no longer just stockpiling nuclear warheads, but is trying to perfect and diversify means of launch.
After a record year of weapons testing and growing nuclear threats from Pyongyang in 2022, Seoul and Washington have stepped up security cooperation.
North Korean military provocations have also pushed Seoul and Tokyo to move beyond their historic differences and try to strengthen their defense cooperation.
Last year North Korea declared itself an “irreversible” nuclear power and leader Kim Jong-un recently called for an “exponential” increase in the production of weapons, including tactical nuclear weapons.
At the beginning of March, he also ordered his army to intensify its military maneuvers in view of a “real war”.