People watch a television screen showing a news report showing North Korea’s missile test, at a railway station in Seoul on November 2, 2022.
Jung Yeon-je | AFP | beautiful pictures
Seoul, South Korea – North Korea fired more than 20 ballistic missiles on Wednesday, a record, leaving residents of a Korea Island to an underground shelter as opponents engage in a launch series around them tense sea border.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s military began the exchange by test-firing several ballistic missiles, one of which landed south of the buffer zone on the sea border between the two countries for the first time since. since the division of the Korean Peninsula in 1948. South Korea responded by firing three surface-to-air missiles north of the border, followed by 100 artillery salvos and additional missile launches. lasts until evening.
The exchange marked the latest major escalation between the two neighbors after months of provocation by Pyongyang. Analysts say they could be a sign that Kim Jong Un wants to increase tensions as he seeks to develop his regime’s nuclear arsenal. put pressure on the US to ease the crippling sanctions and challenge the new conservative leader of the South.
Christopher Green, a senior consultant on the Korean Peninsula at the International Crisis Group, said that as his repeated weapons tests draw little attention on the international stage, Kim is “cutting” across the ladder,” said Christopher Green, senior adviser on the Korean Peninsula at the International Crisis Group, looking for new ways to get the world’s attention. He told NBC News that Wednesday’s North Korean provocations, while highly symbolic, were “more for show than for military escalation.”
‘Violating our territory’
Hours before firing its first missile, North Korea threatened the United States and South Korea with continuing joint military exercises this week that the North sees as a rehearsal for invasion. A statement by an official close to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said that if North Korea were attacked, he could use nuclear weapons to make the two countries “pay the most terrible price in history”. “.
The US and South Korea say the drills, which were resumed this year after being scaled back or halted under the Trump administration, are defensive in nature and they are not intended to attack North Korea.
At an emergency meeting with top security officials, the President of South Korea Yoon Suk Yeol ordered that strict measures be taken in response to Wednesday’s North Korean missile launch, which he called “a real violation of our territory.”
In a phone call between South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin and Foreign Minister Antony Blinken, both officials condemned North Korea’s incursion across the sea border, calling it “a serious military provocation and unprecedented,” according to South Korea’s foreign ministry. They said they would carefully prepare for any further provocations by North Korea and continue to strengthen cooperation.
The launch took place while South Korea was holding a week of national mourning for the victims of the incident Heart of the Halloween crowd in Seoul last weekend. Yoon’s office said the timing of the launches “clearly shows the nature of the North Korean government.”
South Korea’s military said the North’s aggression began at 6:51 a.m. local time (5:51 p.m. ET Tuesday), with four short-range ballistic missiles launched at Huang Hai from North Pyongan Province.
At 8:51 a.m., North Korea launched three short-range ballistic missiles from the eastern coastal town of Wonsan. One of those missiles landed in international waters, 16 miles south of the Northern Limit Line, the de facto sea border between North and South Korea.
Lieutenant General Shin Chul Kang, director of operations at South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, called it “a very unusual and unacceptable act.”
The missile’s landing site was 35 miles east of the city of Sokcho and 104 miles northwest of Ulleung island, prompting the South Korean military to raise its alert status to Level 2 and issue an air strike warning. the island before dismantling it in the afternoon. Photos posted on Korean media show residents on the island being evacuated to underground shelters.
In response, South Korean F-15K and KF-16 fighter jets fired three precision-guided surface-to-air missiles at a target north of the buffer zone of the sea border, about the same distance from the sea border. North Korean missiles.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said: “Our military’s response reaffirms our resolve to respond sternly to any provocation by North Korea and demonstrates our ability to precisely strike the enemy. his enemies”.
During the day, North Korea fired at least 23 ballistic missiles into the sea. The South Korean military said it also fired 100 projectiles into the maritime buffer zone between the two countries, in violation of the 2018 agreement.
None of the missiles landed on the actual territory of the two Koreas, and neither did the countries engage in any live-fire.
“Kim Jong Un is definitely testing what the South Koreans are going to do,” said Aidan Foster-Carter, an emeritus senior research fellow in sociology and modern North Korea at the University of Leeds, UK. “And of course, it is very difficult, as the previous leaders of South Korea have noticed, to find any effective response that does not escalate the situation further.”
North Korea has conducted more than 50 missile launches this year, more than ever. US and South Korean officials say North Korea may also be preparing for a seventh nuclear test, which would be its first since September 2017.
Green said Wednesday’s North Korean missile launches were not on the same scale as the sinking of the South Korean navy ship Cheonan in March 2010, which killed 46 sailors and for which South Korea was to blame. North Korea, or the November 2010 North Korean shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, which South Korea said killed two civilians.
He pointed out that North Korea is opposed to Yoon, a conservative leader who has vowed to take a tougher approach to Pyongyang, as well as the US-South Korea military exercises that Russia and China hold. also criticized.
But Russia and China are also wary of North Korea and its unpredictability, Foster-Carter said.
“They’re going to tell Kim Jong Un to cool it down, and for that reason, I’m moderately assured that this won’t escalate out of control.”
Stella Kim reports from Seoul, and Jennifer Jett reports from Hong Kong.
