SEOUL, South Korea: North Korea on Friday fired what appeared to be two short-range ballistic missiles in its third weapons launch this month, officials in South Korea said, in an apparent reprisal for fresh sanctions imposed by the Biden administration for its continuing test launches.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missiles were fired 11 minutes apart from an inland area in western North Pyongan province, where North Korea is known to operate key missile bases and has frequently conducted test launches in recent years.
The missiles flew 430 kilometers (267 miles) cross-country on a maximum altitude of 36 kilometers (22 miles) before landing in the sea, the military said.
Japan’s coast guard urged vessels to pay attention to falling objects, but Chief Cabinet Secetary Hirokazu Matsuno said there were no reports of damage to vessels or aircraft.
Hours earlier, North Korea issued a statement berating the Biden administration for imposing fresh sanctions over its previous missile tests and warned of stronger and more explicit action if Washington maintains its “confrontational stance.”
The Treasury Department sanctions targeted five North Koreans over their roles in obtaining equipment and technology for the North’s missile programs in its response to the North’s missile test this week. The State Department ordered sanctions against another North Korean, a Russian man and a Russian company for their broader support of North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction activities.
The Biden administration also announced it will seek UN sanctions, and a senior official from the US Mission to the United Nations said Friday that Washington will seek targeted measures against five individuals tied to North Korea’s weapons development and is working with its allies on additional designations.
The official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said there has been no response from North Korea to the US offer some months ago to sit down without preconditions to talk about ways to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, and the possibility of US humanitarian assistance. The only response from Pyongyang has been renewed missile tests which are “pretty destabilizing, dangerous and most importantly contravene a whole host of UN Security Council resolutions,” the official said.
The test-launch of a hypersonic missile on Tuesday — the second in a week — was overseen by leader Kim Jong Un, who said it would greatly increase his country’s nuclear “war deterrent.”
North Korea has been ramping up tests of new, potentially nuclear-capable missiles designed to overwhelm missile defenses in the region. Some experts say Kim is going back to a tried-and-true technique of pressuring the world with missile launches and outrageous threats before offering negotiations meant to extract concessions.
Following an unusually provocative run in nuclear and long-range missile tests in 2017 that demonstrated the North’s pursuit of an arsenal that could target the American homeland, Kim initiated diplomacy with former President Donald Trump in 2018 in an attempt to leverage his nukes for economic benefits.
But the negotiations derailed after Kim’s second summit with Trump in 2019, when the Americans rejected his demands for major sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of the North’s nuclear capabilities.
Kim has since pledged to further expand a nuclear arsenal he clearly sees as his strongest guarantee of survival, despite the country’s economy suffering major setbacks after it shut its borders during the pandemic as well as persistent US-led sanctions.
His government has so far rejected the Biden administration’s open-ended offer to resume talks, saying Washington must abandon its “hostile policy” first — a term Pyongyang mainly uses to describe the sanctions and joint US-South Korea military drills.
South Korea’s presidential office said National Security Director Suh Hoon and other senior officials convened an emergency National Security Council meeting, expressed “strong regret” over the continued launches and urged Pyongyang to recommit to dialogue.
Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said North Korea appears to be signaling it will not be ignored and will respond to pressure with pressure.
“North Korea is trying to lay a trap for the Biden administration,” Easley said. “It has queued up missiles that it wants to test anyway and is responding to US pressure with additional provocations in an effort to extort concessions.”
The timing of the launch and detection of multiple missiles suggest North Korea demonstrated weapons that were already operational, rather than some of its other missiles under development, as it sought to signal Washington, said Kim Dong-yub, a professor at Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies.
He said the North may have tested a solid-fuel missile apparently modeled after Russia’s Iskander mobile ballistic system,
