SEOUL, Nov 7 (Reuters) – North Korea said on Monday its recent missile launches were mock attacks against South Korea and the United States as the two countries conducted a “dangerous war drill”, while that the South said it had recovered parts of a North Korean Missile near its coast.
Last week, North Korea tested several missiles, including a failed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and hundreds of artillery shells at sea, as South Korea and the United States conducted six days of air drills which ended on Saturday.
The North’s military said the “Vigilant Storm” drills were an “open provocation aimed at intentionally escalating tension” and “a dangerous war exercise of a very aggressive nature.”
The North’s military said it had carried out activities simulating attacks on air bases and aircraft, as well as a major city in South Korea, to “crush the enemies’ persistent war hysteria”.
The flurry of missile launches included most in a single day and comes amid a record year of missile tests by nuclear-armed North Korea.
South Korean and US officials have also said Pyongyang has made technical preparations to test a nuclear device, the first time it has done so since 2017.
Senior diplomats from the United States, Japan and South Korea spoke by phone on Sunday and condemned the recent tests, including the “reckless” launch of a missile that landed off the coast of South Korea last week, according to a statement from the United States Department of State.
An official of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday that a South Korean ship had recovered debris believed to be part of North Korea’s short-range ballistic missile (SRBM). it was the first time a North Korean ballistic missile had landed near South Korean waters.
The South Korean Navy rescue ship used an underwater probe to retrieve the pieces, which are being analyzed, the official said.
DISPUTED CLAIMS
North Korea’s military said it fired two “strategic” cruise missiles on Nov. 2 into waters off South Korea’s Ulsan, the southeastern coastal city that is home to a nuclear power plant and large factory parks .
South Korean officials called that claim “false” and said they had not tracked any missiles near there.
Analysts said some of the photos released by North Korea’s state media appeared to be recycled from launches earlier this year.
[1/5] North Korea’s recent missile tests are shown in this undated composite photo taken at undisclosed locations and released on Nov. 7, 2022, by the North Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). KCNA via REUTERS
The operations also included the launch of two “tactical ballistic missiles loaded with cluster warheads,” a test of a “special functional warhead that cripples the enemy’s operation command system,” and a “combat sortie total” with 500 fighter planes. according to a statement released by the official KCNA news agency.
Five hundred fighters would represent nearly all of the dedicated fighter aircraft in the North’s inventory, which seems unlikely given that many have 40- to 80-year-old aircraft and not all are in service or remain in the active fleet, said Joseph Dempsey, a defense researcher at the International Institute. for strategic studies.
“The 500 figure seems exaggerated or at least misleading,” he said in a post on Twitter.
The General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army (KPA) accused Seoul and Washington of provoking a “more unstable confrontation” and vowed to counter their drills with “sustained, decisive and overwhelming practical military measures.”
“The more persistent the enemies’ provocative military moves, the more thoroughly and mercilessly the KPA will counter them,” he said in the statement.
NEW MISSILE?
According to analysts, the photos released by state media appeared to show a new type or variant of ICBM not previously reported.
“It’s not explicit in their statement, but the design doesn’t match one we’ve seen before,” said Ankit Panda, a missile expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
He said the launch shown could have been a development platform for evaluating missile subsystems, possibly including a vehicle for multiple independently guided re-entry vehicles (MIRVs), which allow a single missile to launch nuclear warheads at different targets.
“This is definitely an ICBM-sized missile,” Panda said.
George William Herbert, an assistant professor at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies and a missile consultant, said the images showed what appeared to be a new nose on North Korea’s Hwasong-15 ICBM, which was tested by first time in 2017.
The nose is shaped differently and appears larger than needed for the 200- to 300-kiloton nuclear device shown in state media and apparently tested in 2017, he said.
Herbert said the shape is better suited for a single large warhead than for multiple smaller warheads such as a MIRV.
Kim has called for the development of both larger and smaller nuclear warheads, which could be used in MIRVs or for tactical weapons.
Reporting by Hyonhee Shin and Josh Smith; Editing by Daniel Wallis, Diane Craft and Gerry Doyle
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