Pyongyang continues January launch spree as new rockets spotted | Weapons News
South Korean military and Japanese coast guard detect what would be the seventh launch this month.
North Korea has fired more projectiles into the sea off its east coast, in what would be the seventh launch since the start of the year.
Leader Kim Jong Un has said he wants to boost the country’s military and modernise its weaponry, with a hypersonic missile among the rockets tested since the start of the year.
Sunday’s tests were detected by South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff and Japan’s coast guard, which said that North Korea appeared to have fired a ballistic missile.
North Korea on Friday confirmed it had tested two long-range cruise missiles.
The nuclear-armed country is banned from testing ballistic missiles under United Nations sanctions, which have also squeezed its economy. Talks on denuclearisation have been stalled since the collapse of the summit between Kim and then United States President Donald Trump in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2019.
Earlier in January, it opened its border with China for the first time since the start of the coronavirus pandemic amid reports of rising food prices and hunger.
“The international message behind North Korea’s month of missile tests is about price,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. “The Kim regime hears external discussions of its domestic weaknesses and sees South Korea’s growing strength. So it wants to remind Washington and Seoul that trying to topple it would be too costly. By threatening stability in Asia while global resources are stretched thin elsewhere, Pyongyang is demanding the world compensate it to act like a ‘responsible nuclear power.’”
North Korea said earlier this month it considered resuming “all temporally-suspended activities”, hinting that it might lift a self-imposed moratorium on testing nuclear bombs and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
The North has not tested a nuclear weapon since 2017, but embarked on a flurry of tests after the Hanoi talks broke down over Kim’s demand for sanctions relief.
