North Korea fires 2 short-range missiles, draws US condemnation

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North Korea fires 2 short-range missiles, draws US condemnation

North Korea fires two missiles as the US condemns a flurry of tests.

Nuclear-armed North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles on Thursday, drawing condemnation from the United States for what would be the sixth round of missile tests this month.

The series of tests is one of the most missiles launched by North Korea in a month, analysts said, as it begins in 2022 with a dizzying display of new and operational weapons.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said it had detected the launch of two ballistic missiles at around 8 am 2300 GMT from near Hamhung, on the east coast of North Korea. JCS said they travelled for about 190 km to an altitude of 20 km.

North Korea said this month it would bolster its defences against the United States and consider resuming all temporally-suspended activities as a result of a moratorium on tests of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.

The missile launch came after North Korea fired two cruise missiles into the sea off its east coast on Tuesday, adding to the tension over its tests.

North Korea tested tactical guided missiles, two hypersonic missiles capable of high speed and manoeuvring after liftoff, and a railway-borne missile system earlier in the month.

Leif-Eric Easley, an international affairs professor at Ewha University in Seoul said that the Kim Jong Un regime is developing an impressive range of offensive weapons despite limited resources and serious economic challenges.

He said that certain tests are intended to develop new capabilities, especially for evading missile defences, while other tests are intended to demonstrate the readiness and versatility of missile forces that North Korea has already deployed.

Some observers have suggested that the Kim regime's frequent launches are a cry for attention, but Pyongyang is running hard in what it perceives as an arms race with Seoul, Easley said.

In a speech to the UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament on Tuesday, Han Tae Song, the ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, accused the United States of staging hundreds of joint war drills while sending high-tech military equipment into South Korea and nuclear weapons into the region.

Han said that this is seriously threatening the security of our state.

A US State Department spokeswoman said the actions were a violation of UN Security Council resolutions and a threat to North Korea's neighbours and the international community.

The United States remains committed to a diplomatic approach and calls for North Korea to engage in dialogue, the spokesperson said.

As with other recent tests, the US military's Indo-Pacific Command said the launch was destabilising, but did not pose an immediate threat to US territory or personnel, or to its allies.

Hirokazu Matsuno, Japan's chief cabinet secretary, said that North Korea's recent remarkable developments in nuclear and missile technology could not be overlooked.

The National Security Council of South Korea convened an emergency meeting, at which it said the launches were very regrettable and went against calls for peace and stability in the region.

US President Joe Biden's administration sanctioned several North Korean and Russian individuals and entities this month on accusations that they were helping North Korea's weapons programme, but China and Russia stopped the US bid to impose UN sanctions on five North Koreans.

On Wednesday, the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Japan and Korea Mark Lambert said Washington had no reservations about talking with North Korea and was willing to talk about anything.

He said that there had to be a serious discussion about the denuclearization of North Korea and if North Korea is willing to do that, all kinds of promising things can happen, he said during an online seminar hosted by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

North Korea defended its missile tests as a sovereign right of self-defence and said US sanctions showed that even as the United States proposes talks, it maintained a hostile policy.

The North Korean UN envoy Han said on Tuesday that the recent test-firing of new weapons was part of the activities for carrying out a medium and long-term plan for the development of national science.

It does not pose any threat to the security of neighbouring countries or the region. North Korea has not launched long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles ICBMs or tested nuclear weapons since 2017 but began testing a slew of shorter-range missiles after denuclearisation talks stalled after a failed summit with the United States in 2019.