North Korea fired a salvo of short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan, on Thursday morning, Seoul announced, hours after sending balloons south filled with rubbish.
Dozens of ballistic missiles from North Korea
The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said it had detected the launch of “what is suspected to be around ten short-range ballistic missiles” fired towards the waters east of the Korean peninsula. The projectiles traveled some 350 kilometers and their characteristics are being examined by South Korea, the United States and Japan, according to the same source. This shot is a “provocation which seriously threatens peace and stability on the Korean peninsula,” said the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Tokyo also confirmed and “strongly condemned” the launch of these devices which “appear to have fallen outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone”, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told journalists. Fumio Kishida was in Seoul on Monday for talks with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang on the occasion of a first tripartite summit since 2019 between Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing, during which they reaffirmed their commitment to “denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula”.
A mutual return of balloons
On Wednesday, Pyongyang sent balloons filled with trash, toilet paper and suspected animal excrement to the South, an action the South Korean military deemed “low class.” South Korean activists sometimes release balloons carrying propaganda leaflets and money intended for people living north of the heavily fortified border, which has long aroused the ire of Pyongyang, which has also carried out in the past sending balloons towards his neighbor.
“We tried something they have always done, but I don’t understand why they are making such a fuss as if they were victims of a hail of bullets,” said Kim Yo Jong, the sister of leader Kim Jong One and one of the main spokespersons for power, in a press release published by the North Korean news agency KNCA. The ballistic missile launch also came a few days after an attempt to put a spy satellite into orbit by Pyongyang, the failure of which was announced by the North on Monday.
The UN Security Council is due to meet on Friday to discuss this attempt, condemned by Seoul, Tokyo and even Washington. Putting a reconnaissance craft into orbit has long been a priority for Kim Jong Un’s regime, which claimed to have succeeded in November, after two failed attempts in 2023. Experts say spy satellites could improve capabilities of Pyongyang in terms of intelligence collection, particularly vis-à-vis its great rival, South Korea, and provide crucial data in the event of military conflict.
A sign of protest against the United Nations
The firing of ballistic missiles observed Thursday morning “seems to be a protest from the North after the commitment on denuclearization obtained during the tripartite summit and the convening of a meeting of the UN Security Council to discuss the satellite launch”, said Hong Min, analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, to AFP.
“It is unprecedented that such a large number of short-range missiles were fired simultaneously,” he also observed. The missile launch observed Thursday morning also comes after the dissolution of the United Nations sanctions monitoring system against North Korea and its nuclear program due to a veto by Russia.