North Korea launched an unidentified ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan on Friday in what is the umpteenth show of regime force in a year in which it has carried out a record number of such tests.
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The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said in a statement that Pyongyang launched a ballistic missile of an unknown type at the moment into the East Sea (the name given to the Sea of Japan in the two Koreas), while the Japanese Defense Ministry spoke of an apparently ballistic projectile and the Japanese Coast Guard mentioned that it would have already fallen into the water, although without detailing where specifically.
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Today’s test comes at a time when tension is at its highest on the Korean peninsula and just a day after Seoul conducted a test for a future solid-fuel space rocket with which it wants to speed up the deployment of satellites military recognition.
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This year North Korea, immersed in a five-year weapons modernization plan and still completely closed to the outside due to the pandemic, has carried out practically fifty launches of projectiles of different types and, especially in the second half of the year, has been executing these tests to replicate to the South and the US
Faced with the regime’s refusal to resume diplomacy and its insistence on strengthening its arsenal, Seoul and Washington resumed their major military maneuvers since May and have chosen to respond to Pyongyang’s tests with the rotating deployment of US strategic assets on the peninsula, which it has brought about and accelerated an action-reaction cycle that experts view with concern.
This latest release also comes at a time when the North Korean single party is holding an important plenary session in Pyongyang to set its 2023 agenda and the regime is expected to publish leader Kim Jong-un’s closing speech tomorrow, January 1. , which could include messages for the US or South Korea.
EFE