North Korea fires salvo of short-range ballistic missiles

North Korea has fired a salvo of short-range ballistic missiles, Seoul’s military said, in Pyongyang’s second launch in days.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at a construction site in North Pyongan Province. Picvture: KCNA / AFP.

North Korea has fired a salvo of short-range ballistic missiles, Seoul’s military said, in Pyongyang’s second launch in days which came as Americans voted for a new president.

The nuclear-armed North last week test-fired what it said was its most advanced and powerful solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile in Kim Jong-un’s first weapons test since being accused of sending soldiers to help Russia fight Ukraine.

Pyongyang, which has denied the deployment, is under growing international pressure to withdraw its troops from Russia, with Seoul warning that thousands of soldiers were being deployed to frontline areas, including Kursk.

Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said it detected the launch of “several short-range ballistic missiles” at 7.30am on Tuesday into waters east of the Korean peninsula.

The missiles flew approximately 400km and Seoul’s military said it had tracked the launch in real time while sharing information with Tokyo and Washington. “In preparation for additional launches, our military has strengthened surveillance and alertness,” it added.

The US condemned the latest missile tests. “These launches, as well as last week’s launch of an ­intercontinental ballistic missile, are in violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions,” a State Department spokesman said, adding that they “undermine the global nonproliferation regime”.

And at the UN, 10 of the 15 members of the Security Council issued a joint statement, urging North Korea to abandon its ballistic missile program. In Japan, government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi said the North’s “repeated launches of ballistic missiles threaten the peace and security of our country”.

On Sunday, South Korea, Japan and the US conducted a joint air drill involving a US B-1B bomber, South Korean F-15K and KF-16 fighter jets, and Japanese F-2 jets, in response to the ICBM launch. Such joint drills infuriate Pyongyang, which views them as rehearsals for invasion.

Pyongyang’s latest launch was “a direct response to the trilateral aerial exercises over the weekend”, said Han Kwon-hee of the Korea Association of Defence ­Industry Studies. “Given it was a salvo of short-range missiles, the North is indicating that it not only has long-range missiles capable of reaching the US, but also short-range ones to target all bases in South Korea and Japan.”

Kim Yo-jong, sister of the country’s leader and a key spokeswoman, called the US-South Korea-Japan exercises an “action-based explanation of the most hostile and dangerous ­aggressive nature of the enemy toward our republic”.

In a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, she said the drill was ­“absolute proof of the validity and urgency of the line of building up the nuclear forces we have opted for and put into practice”.

Seoul has long accused the ­nuclear-armed North of sending weapons to help Moscow fight Kyiv and alleged that Pyongyang has moved to deploy soldiers en masse since Kim Jong-un signed a mutual defence deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin in June.

“More than 10,000 North ­Korean soldiers are currently in Russia, and we assess that a significant portion of them are ­deployed to frontline areas, including Kursk,” said Jeon ­Ha-gyu, a spokesman for the South Korean Defence Ministry.

Seoul, a major weapons ­exporter, has said it is reviewing whether to send weapons to Ukraine in response, something it has previously resisted because of a longstanding domestic ­policy that prevents it from ­providing weapons for active ­conflicts.

With its recent testing spate, “Pyongyang is showing that its contribution of weapons and troops to Russia’s war in Ukraine does not curtail its military activities closer to home,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.

“On the contrary, co-operation with Moscow appears to enable blatant violations of UN Security Council resolutions.”

AFP