North Korea launched a ballistic missile on Thursday that landed in waters just east of the Korean peninsula, according to the South Korean government.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed the short-range ballistic missile launch from the eastern coastal area of Wonsan at 10:48 a.m., hours after North Korean officials threatened “fiercer” military action amid alleged provocations of the United States and South Korea, and Japan.
South Korea has stepped up surveillance of North Korea due to the growing missile threat and continues to maintain a military readiness for a potential conflict, officials said.
In this photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un delivers a lecture at Central Cadres Training School in North Korea on October 17, 2022.
(Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)
Hours before Thursday’s launch, North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hue warned that the recent US-South Korea-Japan summit would disrupt tensions on the Korean peninsula and leave them “more unpredictable”.
US AND SOUTH KOREA THREATEN TO END KIM’S REGIME IF NORTH KOREA USES NUCLEAR WEAPONS
“The more enthusiastic the United States is about the “enhanced offer of extended deterrence” to its allies and the more it intensifies its provocative and bluffing military activities on the Korean peninsula and in the region, the more ferocious the (North Korea’s) military contraction will be, live proportion to it,” Choe said. “It will pose a more serious, realistic and unavoidable threat to the United States and its subordinate forces.”
Choe added, “The United States will be well aware of gambling it will surely regret.”
Two U.S. Air Force B-1B bombers, four South Korean Air Force F-35 fighter jets and four U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter jets fly over the South Korean peninsula Nov. 5, 2022. North Korea made threats on Thursday Nov. 17 2022. 2022.
(South Korean Ministry of Defense via AP)
The statement came in response to President Joe Biden’s trilateral meeting with South Korean and Japanese state leaders during a regional meeting in Cambodia on Sunday.
The three leaders issued a joint statement strongly condemning North Korea’s recent missile tests and saying they will continue to work together to strengthen deterrence.
Separately, Biden reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to defend South Korea and Japan with a full range of capabilities, including its nuclear weapons, in the event of a threat to their sovereignty.
NORTH KOREA WARNS OF A ‘MORE POWERFUL’ RESPONSE TO JOINT US-SOUTH KOREA MILITARY EXERCISES
South Korea’s defense ministry spokesman Moon Hong Sik told reporters that security cooperation between Seoul, Washington and Tokyo is aimed at nuclear deterrence.
A man looks at a television screen showing news footage of a North Korean missile test, at a train station in Seoul on November 2, 2022.
(JUNG YEON-JE/AFP via Getty Images)
North Korea has been conducting regular missile tests, including short- and medium-range ballistic missile tests, as it seeks to develop a weapon capable of striking the United States.
Many experts say North Korea plans to use the threat of nuclear war to leverage bigger concessions from rivals.
On Thursday, Choe said that “the United States and its followers have staged large-scale aggression war exercises one after another, but have failed to contain North Korea’s overwhelming reaction.”
North Korea has said its recent testing activities are legitimate military countermeasures to cooperation between US and South Korean military forces, which it sees as military exercises and offensive preparation for attacks on the North.
Washington and Seoul have repeatedly said their drills are defensive.
US President Joe Biden meets with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, left, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, right, on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit on November 13, 2022 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Since the summer, South Korean and US troops have expanded their regular exercises and resumed trilateral training with Japan, while North Korea strengthens its nuclear and missile arsenals. More recent exercises involved a US aircraft carrier and US B-1B supersonic bombers.
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The continued training is a diplomatic change of pace from recent years, in which such military exercises between Seoul and Washington have been voluntarily curtailed or canceled to bolster diplomacy between North and South Korea. They have also been hampered by the pandemic of COVID-19.
Officials in the United States, South Korea and Japan remain concerned that North Korea could develop or test its first nuclear test in five years.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
