North Korea fired its most powerful missile since 2017 on Sunday, further escalating its series of seven weapons tests this year and striking fear into seoul of upcoming nuclear tests or with long-range projectiles.
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Pyongyang, which had never conducted so many tests in a month, hinted last week at an abandonment of the nearly five-year self-imposed moratorium on nuclear or intercontinental missile tests.
North Korea “has come close to destroying the moratorium they declared,” South Korean President Moon Jae-in warned in a statement after an emergency meeting.
of National Security Council from the country.
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Seoul warned that its neighbor seemed to follow “a similar pattern” to 2017, when tensions on the peninsula were on the brink of a precipice, and warned that the next step could be to resume the nuclear and long-range missile program.
The South Korean military said it had “detected an intermediate-range ballistic missile launched at a high angle in the direction of the East Sea,” also known as the Sea of Japan.
This sloped trajectory means that projectiles are launched at a high angle instead of using their full range. The Joint Chiefs of Staff of South Korea He noted that the missile had reached an estimated maximum height of 2,000 kilometers and would have traveled about 800 kilometers in half an hour.
This would indicate that Pyongyang has tested its “first intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) since 2017,” analyst Joseph Dempsey wrote on Twitter.
of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
The last time the communist regime launched a similar projectile was in 2017, when a Hwasong-12 missile traveled 787 kilometers with a maximum height of 2,111 kilometers.
Analysts then indicated that, due to the trajectory of the missile, it could have reached a range of 4,500 kilometers if it had used an angle that maximized its trajectory, with which it could have reached the US territory of Guam, in the Pacific.
Japan’s top government spokesman, Hirokazu Matsuno, said the missile launched on Sunday “was an intermediate or long-range missile.”
‘The timing is perfect’
This is the seventh military test in 2022 by North Korea, which has carried out two tests of supersonic missiles and four of short-range ballistic and cruise missiles.
Its leader Kim Jong Un advocated in December to maintain the country’s weapons development and, in January, he has witnessed some of the tests and last week he visited an “important” ammunition factory.
“Kim has been holding back his appetite to test and provoke,” Soo Kim, an analyst at the RAND Corporation, told AFP.
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Now, “the timing is perfect and North Korea’s continued missile launches
The North throws another hot potato into Washington’s already packed portfolio of foreign policy challenges.”
Some experts also indicate the need for the regime to vindicate itself in the face of comments about the country’s weakness due to international sanctions and the self-imposed blockade due to the pandemic, which sank trade with China, its great ally and economic supporter.
“The Kim regime listens to outside discussions of its domestic weaknesses … It wants to remind Washington and Seoul that trying to topple it will be costly,” said Leif Easley, a professor at Ewha University.
In 2017, North Korea’s latest flurry of military tests ended up culminating a year later in the historic summit between Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump in Singapore.
But after talks with Trump collapsed in 2019 in Hanoi, negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington were stalled despite fruitless calls by the Joe Biden administration to resume them.
This series of tests comes at a delicate time for the region. Kim’s main ally, China, is preparing to open the Winter Olympics in Beijing in a few days and South Korea holds presidential elections in March.
And internally, North Korea is preparing to celebrate its 80th anniversary in February.
the birth of Kim’s father, the late Kim Jong Il, and the 110th birthday of his grandfather, the country’s founder Kim Il Sung, in April.
AFP
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