South Korea’s military detected the launch from the North’s eastern Wonsan coastal region at 10:48 a.m., South Korea’s General Staff said in a statement. It said South Korea has stepped up its surveillance of North Korea while maintaining military readiness and close coordination with the United States. It was North Korea’s first ballistic missile launch in eight days and the latest in its barrage of tests in recent months. North Korea has previously said some of the tests were simulations of nuclear attacks on South Korean and US targets. Many experts say North Korea would eventually like to boost its nuclear capability to extract greater concessions from its rivals. Earlier Thursday, North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui warned that a recent US-South Korea-Japan summit agreement on the North would leave tensions on the Korean peninsula “more unpredictable.” Choe’s statement was North Korea’s first official response to US President Joe Biden’s trilateral summit with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts on the sidelines of a regional gathering in Cambodia on Sunday. In their joint statement, the three leaders strongly condemned North Korea’s recent missile tests and agreed to work together to strengthen deterrence, while Biden reaffirmed the US commitment to defend South Korea and Japan with a full range of capabilities, including of its nuclear weapons. “The more intense the US is in its ‘enhanced offer of extended deterrence’ to its allies and the more it steps up provocative and bluffing military activities on the Korean Peninsula and in the region, the tougher (North Korea’s) military response will be, immediately. analogy with it,” Choe said. “It will pose a more serious, realistic and unavoidable threat to the US and its vassals.” Choe did not say what steps North Korea might take, but said “the US will be well aware that they are taking a gamble, which they will certainly regret.” South Korea’s defense ministry responded later on Thursday that the purpose of the trilateral summit was to coordinate a joint response to contain and deter North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile threats. Spokesman Moon Hong-sik told reporters that security cooperation between Seoul, Washington and Tokyo helps strengthen the US’s extended deterrence to its allies. North Korea has consistently maintained that its recent weapons tests are legitimate military responses to US-South Korean military exercises, which it sees as practice to launch attacks on the North. Washington and Seoul have said their drills are defensive in nature. In recent months, South Korean and US troops have expanded their regular exercises and resumed trilateral training with Japan in response to North Korea’s push to expand its nuclear and missile arsenals. Those drills included a US aircraft carrier and US B-1B supersonic bombers for the first time since 2017. In recent years, annual military exercises between Seoul and Washington have been scaled back or canceled in support of now-dormant diplomacy with North Korea and defense from the COVID-19 pandemic. In her statement on Thursday, Choe said that “the US and its supporters have held large-scale war drills for aggression one after another, but have failed to contain North Korea’s overwhelming counterattack.” There have been concerns that North Korea may conduct its first nuclear test in five years as its next major step towards strengthening its military capability against the United States and its allies. US and South Korean officials say North Korea has completed preparations to conduct a nuclear test explosion at its remote test facilities in the northeast. Some experts say the test, if carried out, would be aimed at deploying nuclear warheads on short-range missiles capable of hitting key targets in South Korea, such as US military bases. They say North Korea will eventually seek to use its enhanced arsenal as leverage to pressure the United States into making concessions in future negotiations and recognizing it as a nuclear state. Thursday’s launch came a day after members of the Group of 20 leading economies concluded their summit in Indonesia. The summit was largely overshadowed by other issues such as Russia’s war in Ukraine. But Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol used their bilateral meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping to raise the issue of North Korea. The two held a trilateral summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and discussed North Korea before coming to Indonesia for the G-20 summit. In their respective bilateral talks with Xi, Biden noted that all members of the international community have an interest in encouraging North Korea to act responsibly, while Yun called on China to play a more active and constructive role in countering the North’s nuclear threats. Korea. China, the North’s last major ally and biggest source of aid, is reportedly avoiding full UN sanctions on North Korea and sending secret aid to the North to help its impoverished neighbor survive and continue to act as a bulwark against US influences. the korean peninsula.
