- Multiple missiles launched into the sea, according to the South Korean military
- One landed south of the disputed inter-Korean maritime border
- South Korean president vows North Korea ‘will pay the price’
- North Korea calls allied military exercises ‘provocative’
SEOUL, Nov 2 (Reuters) – North Korea fired at least 17 missiles into the sea on Wednesday, including one that landed less than 60 km (40 miles) off South Korea’s coast, which the South’s President Yoon Suk-yeol, described as “territorial”. invasion”.
It was the first time a ballistic missile had landed near southern waters since the peninsula was divided in 1945, and the most missiles fired by the North in a single day. South Korea issued rare air strike warnings and launched its own missiles in response.
The missile landed outside South Korea’s territorial waters, but south of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), a disputed inter-Korean maritime border.
South Korean warplanes fired three air-to-surface missiles into the North Sea across the NLL in response, the South’s military said. One official said the weapons used included an AGM-84H/K SLAM-ER, which is a US-made “ranged” precision strike weapon that can fly up to 270 km (170 miles) with a 360 kg (800-). pound) warhead.
The South’s launches came after Yoon’s office promised a “swift and firm response”.
“North Korea’s provocation today was an effective act of territorial invasion by a missile that penetrated the NLL for the first time since the division (of the two Koreas),” told reporters a senior official in Yoon’s office.
When asked if the missile was flying towards the South’s territory and should have been intercepted, the official said: “Strictly speaking, it did not land in our territory but in the Exclusive Economic Zone under our jurisdiction, because so it was not intercepted.”
That missile was one of three short-range ballistic missiles fired from North Korea’s coastal zone of Wonsan into the sea, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said. The JCS later said up to 14 more missiles of various types had been fired from North Korea’s east and west coasts.
The JCS said at least one of the missiles landed 26 km south of the NLL, 57 km from the South Korean city of Sokcho on the east coast and 167 km from Ulleung Island, where air raid warnings were sounded.
“We heard the siren around 8:55 a.m. and all of us in the building went down to the evacuation site in the basement,” an Ulleung County official told Reuters. “We stayed there until we went up at about 9:15 after we heard that the projectile went down in the open sea.”
A resident on the southern part of the island said he received no warning.
The North also fired more than 100 artillery rounds from its east coast into a military buffer zone established in a military agreement with the South, South Korea’s military said.
The dismissal violates the 2018 agreement, the JCS said.
North and South Korea are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.
Nuclear-armed North Korea has tested a record number of missiles this year, and officials in Seoul and Washington say the North has completed technical preparations to conduct a nuclear weapons test for the first time since 2017 .
North Korea continues to test ballistic missiles despite multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions banning all ballistic and nuclear tests by the country.
[1/5] People watch a television broadcast of a news report about North Korea firing a ballistic missile off its east coast, in Seoul, South Korea, November 2, 2022. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji
The launches came just hours after Pyongyang demanded that the United States and South Korea halt large-scale military exercises, saying “such provocations and military provocations can no longer be tolerated.”
Even as Yoon declared a national week of mourning after more than 150 people were killed in a weekend crowd surge in Seoul, the United States and South Korea began one of their largest combined military air drills on Monday. big. Called Vigilant Storm, the exercises involve hundreds of warplanes from both sides conducting mock strikes around the clock. Read more
MAIN MILITARY EXERCISES
North Korea, which for years has pursued missile and nuclear programs in defiance of UN sanctions, had said a recent flurry of launches was in response to allied exercises.
Pak Jong Chon, secretary of the Central Committee of North Korea’s Workers’ Party, said in a statement on Wednesday that the number of warplanes involved in the Vigilant Storm showed that the exercise was “aggressive and provocative” and specifically target North Korea. He said even its name mimicked the US-led Operation Desert Storm against Iraq in the 1990s.
“The disorderly movements of hostile forces for military confrontation have created a serious situation on the Korean Peninsula,” Pak said in a statement carried by the state-run KCNA news agency.
In Washington on Tuesday, US State Department spokesman Ned Price said the drills were “purely defensive in nature” and that the US had made clear to North Korea that it had no hostile intent.
Price added that the United States and its allies had also made clear that there would be “profound costs and profound consequences” if North Korea resumed nuclear testing, which would be a “dangerous and destabilizing step.” He did not elaborate.
In a phone call with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin called North Korea’s missile launch “unprecedented” and a “serious act of military provocation”. The two officials condemned the launch and agreed to cooperate against threats from North Korea, Park’s office said in a statement.
“NEW WAY” Missile Launch
South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said that due to the launches, some air routes over the sea between North Korea and Japan would be closed until Thursday.
“Our military can never tolerate such provocative acts by North Korea, and will respond strictly and firmly under close cooperation between South Korea and the United States,” JCS said in a press release.
Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada said the government believed at least two ballistic missiles had been launched from North Korea, one flying east and the other southeast.
The first flew 150 km to a maximum altitude of about 150 km, while the second covered a range of 200 km to a maximum altitude of 100 km, he told reporters in Tokyo on Wednesday morning.
Reuters charts
North Korea’s actions threaten the peace and stability of Japan, the wider region, as well as the wider international community, Hamada said.
Reporting by Soo-hyang Choi, Choonsik Yoo and Josh Smith; Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington and Sakura Murakami in Tokyo; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Gerry Doyle, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Nick Macfie
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