North Korea on Sunday launched its most powerful missile since 2017, an escalation after carrying out seven weapons tests since the start of the year, raising fears in neighboring South Korea over nuclear tests or long-range projectile launches. reach.
Pyongyang, which has never carried out so many weapons tests in just one month, hinted last week that it might abandon a self-imposed nearly five-year moratorium on intercontinental or nuclear missile launches.
North Korea “is close to destroying the moratorium it has declared,” South Korean President Moon Jae-in warned in a statement after an emergency meeting of the National Security Council.
Seoul warned that the neighboring country appeared to follow a “similar pattern” to 2017, when tensions left the peninsula on the edge of a cliff, and said the next step could be the resumption of the nuclear and long-range missile program.
The South Korean army said it had detected “an intermediate-range ballistic missile launched at a high angle towards the East Sea”, also known as the Sea of Japan.
The slanted trajectory means that projectiles are launched at a high angle, without taking full advantage of their range.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff of South Korea pointed out that the missile reached a calculated maximum height of 2,000 kilometers and would have traveled 800 kilometers in half an hour.
This would indicate that Pyongyang has tested its “first intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) since 2017,” Joseph Dempsey, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, wrote on Twitter.
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 said at the time that, given the missile’s trajectory, the projectile could have traveled 4,500 kilometers if it had used an angle that maximized its trajectory, meaning it could have reached the US territory of Guam in the Pacific.
Japanese government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno said the missile launched on Sunday had “intermediate or long range”.
The US government condemned the launch. A State Department spokesperson told South Korean news agency Yonhap that this is a “clear violation” of UN resolutions.
– “The timing is perfect” –
This is North Korea’s seventh military trial of 2022, which has carried out two tests of supersonic missiles and four tests of short-range and cruise ballistic missiles.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un defended in December the continuity of the country’s arms development and followed some tests earlier this year. Last week, he visited a munitions factory.
“Kim managed to curb his appetite for testing and teasing,” Soo Kim, an analyst at RAND Corporation, told AFP.
“Now the timing is perfect and North Korea’s continued missile launch presents another hot potato for Washington’s already crowded foreign policy challenge portfolio.”
Some analysts also point to the need for the regime to show strength in the face of comments that the country has weakened due to international sanctions, as well as the self-imposed blockade by the pandemic, which has brought down trade with China, a great ally and economic support.
“The Kim regime listens to external discussions about its domestic frailties (…) It wants to remind Washington and Seoul that trying to overthrow it will be expensive,” said Leif Easley, a professor at Ewha University.
In 2017, North Korea’s latest wave of military tests culminated, a year later, in the historic summit between Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump in Singapore.
But after talks with Trump broke down in 2019 in Hanoi, talks between Pyongyang and Washington have stalled despite fruitless calls from the Joe Biden administration for a resumption.
This series of tests comes at a delicate time for the region. North Korea’s main ally, China, is preparing to open the Beijing Winter Olympics in a few days and South Korea will have presidential elections in March.
Domestically, North Korea is preparing to celebrate the 80th birthday of Kim’s father, the late Kim Jong Il, in February and the 110th birthday of his grandfather, the country’s founder, Kim Il Sung, in April.
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