Seoul and Washington on Wednesday responded to Tuesday’s North Korean launch by firing short-range missiles and announcing the return of a US aircraft carrier to waters off the east coast of South Koreawhich underlines the persistent increase in tensions in the region.
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This joint response responds to agreements recently reached by the allies and anticipates an increase in war trials on both sides and, consequently, an increase in tension to levels close to the worrying levels seen in 2017.
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Early Wednesday, the South Korean and US militaries fired four short-range surface-to-surface missiles from the ATACMS to the Sea of Japan (called the East Sea in the two Koreas)as detailed by the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).
Those four projectiles were in fact accompanied by a fifth, a South Korean Hyunmoo-2 short-range ballistic missile, whose launch from the Gangneung air base, some 170 kilometers east of Seoul, was unsuccessful.
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Despite crashing inside the military facility and causing no casualties or injuries, the erroneous launch sparked criticism from nearby residents for the sight of the explosion and the total lack of information from the army, which did not confirm the event for up to 12 hours. after.
These missile launches were preceded late Tuesday by a South Korean air force maneuver that included a squadron of F-15 fighters, one of which dropped two precision bombs over the Yellow Sea.
These actions are a response to the test carried out on Tuesday by Pyongyang, which fired what appears to be a Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) that flew over Japan for the first time since 2017 and that has been the North Korean projectile that has the longest distance ever traveled, having flown around 4,500 kilometres.
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The response of the allies is part of the so-called “extended deterrence”, finalized in May and by which Washington commits to deploy strategic Pentagon assets on the Korean peninsula in a “coordinated manner and when necessary”, depending on the actions from Pyongyang.
In this sense, nothing fits better within the concept of “extended deterrence” that the decisionannounced today, to return the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan to the waters of the Sea of Japan, just a week after the ship carried out maneuvers there with the South Korean and Japanese navies.
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The Ronald Reagan had not moved through waters near the Korean peninsula since that unfortunate 2017, when the repeated weapons tests in Pyongyang and the harsh dialectical clashes between the then US president, Donald Trump, and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, they feared a fatal miscalculation.
For its part, the North Korean media kept absolute silence regarding the missile launched the day before, unlike what has been seen for months, in which several of the new projectiles included in the ambitious weapons modernization plan that the single party have exposed. approved in January 2021.
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In fact, many experts believe that this, together with the fact that the missile was launched to fly over Japan for the first time in five years, implies a purely political and non-technological objective on the part of Pyongyang.
For this reason, there are those who already take for granted an intensification, in quantity and scope, of the North Korean weapons tests -and the consequent responses of the allies- that can be expected in the coming weeks.
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It should be remembered that the satellites have also revealed that North Korea, which has remained totally isolated from the outside since the start of the pandemic, It has been preparing for months to carry out a new nuclear test -it would be the first, again, since 2017- in Punggye-ri (northeast).
Analysts believe, however, that, if carried out soon, the detonation would take place after the conclusion of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress, which starts in 10 days, in order not to stir up Beijing, the main economic supporter of the North Korean regime.
EFE
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