North Korea test-fires strategic cruise missile
North Korea has test-fired sea-to-surface strategic cruise guided missiles, the North's state media reported Sunday, in the first missile launch since US President Donald Trump took office last week.
North Korea has test-fired sea-to-surface strategic cruise guided missiles, the North's state media reported Sunday, in the first missile launch since US President Donald Trump took office last week.
North Korea launched multiple short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea on Tuesday, South Korea's military said, in a provocation staged just days before US President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday stated that the Ukrainian security forces have captured two North Korean military personnel in the Kursk region amid the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
North Korea on Saturday lambasted a recent trilateral meeting between South Korea, the US and Japan that discussed peace in the Indo-Pacific region, deriding the talks as an "insult" to peace.
A Ukrainian media outlet has reported that about 500 North Korean soldiers were killed in a missile strike by Kyiv in Russia's western Kursk region.
“If North Korea deliberately carried out the missile launch while the international community is distracted by the “Russian invasion of Ukraine, such an act is absolutely unforgivable. We cannot overlook considerable missile and nuclear advancement.”
North Korea has a long history of using provocations such as missile or nuclear tests to seek international concessions. The latest tests come as the North’s economy, already battered by decades of mismanagement and crippling U.S.-led sanctions, is hit hard by pandemic border closures. The tests are viewed by many as an attempt to pressure President Biden’s administration into easing the cache of sanctions.
Pyongyang appears to be inching closer to its earlier threat to consider suspending a self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile tests amidst an impasse in its nuclear negotiations with America. The latest launch suggests that Kim’s moratorium is already broken. In recent months, North Korea has ramped up its testing activity.
North Korea fired one suspected ballistic missile from the Jagang Province area on Sunday and the missile landed outside of Japan's exclusive economic zone.
"The government is following North Korea's nuclear and missile activities under close South Korea-US coordination," Lee told reporters here.
