After the break for the Beijing Winter Olympics, Kim Jong-un adds to the war tension in the world by firing a ballistic projectile, his eighth test of the year
As if the world wasn’t stirred up enough by the Russia-launched war in Ukraine, another of Putin’s friends, Kim Jong-un, joins the “party.” North Korea fired a ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan on Sunday, marking its eighth test since the start of the year.
Although the communist regime in Pyongyang had stopped its military tests during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, it has resumed after its conclusion. With this new show of strength, Kim Jong-un gets into his way in the presidential election campaign in South Korea, which will be held on March 9.
“Our Army is following and monitoring the movements of the North and remains prepared,” reported the Joint High Command of the South, which detected the launch at 7:52 in the morning (23:52, Spanish peninsular time). According to the Yonhap agency, the head of the High Command, General Won In-choul, spoke by video call with the head of the combined forces of South Korea and the United States, General Paul LaCamera, to confirm his “solid” defensive posture. . According to his tracking, the projectile was fired from the Sunan area of Pyongyang and flew about 300 kilometers, reaching a maximum height of 620 kilometers.
According to Yonhap, Sunan is the place from which North Korea launched a guided tactical missile called the KN-24 on January 17, which apparently mimics the US ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) projectile system. Pending an official announcement from Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington continue to investigate this new trial. Along with this test, among the other six carried out by the Kim Jong-un regime, that of an intermediate-range missile on January 30 stands out.
UN resolutions against North Korea for its nuclear tests prevent it from carrying out ballistic missile tests, as the latter is believed to be. Following the failure of his 2018 and 2019 summits with former US President Donald Trump, Kim Jong-un returned to military provocations last year amid the severe economic crisis caused by the coronavirus in the country. he. To prevent Covid-19, North Korea has completely closed trade with China, which had allowed some improvement in the situation in recent years. Amid the hardships due to this isolation, which Kim Jong-un himself has publicly acknowledged, Pyongyang is trying to draw attention before the elections in South Korea, adding a little more instability to a world already convulsed by the war in Ukraine. .
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