North Korea Hints at Nuclear Test Following Latest Missile Maneuver

The test might have seemed almost routine had it not appeared as a threat to South Korea, where the conservative Yoon Suk-yeol is to be inaugurated next month as president.

An undated photo shows  a weapon being fired from an undisclosed location in North Korea. Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP

WASHINGTON — North Korea has made good on predictions that it would test-fire a missile or two in conjunction with ceremonies marking the 110th anniversary of the birth of the regime founder, Kim Il-sung.

No sooner was Kim’s grandson and the country’s current strongman, Kim Jong-un, done with attending the nighttime ceremonies Friday than he was off to the launch site, observing “the test-fire of a new-type tactical weapon,” Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency reported Sunday.

The missiles were not the long-range type capable of carrying warheads to America but did appear to have reached a milestone in terms of their use as tactical weapons on the Korean peninsula.

The KCNA dispatch made just that point, stating that “the new-type tactical guided weapon system” was “of great significance in dramatically improving the firepower of the front-line long-range artillery units.”

The dispatch moreover hinted that the test-firing, conducted on Saturday, might be the precursor to North Korea’s next underground nuclear test. The new missile system, it said, was important for “enhancing the efficiency in the operation of tactical nukes” of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

The test-firing, the dispatch added, “was carried out successfully.”

South Korea’s defense ministry confirmed that the North had indeed launched a pair of missiles, neither of them long-range. They flew only 68.3 miles, said the ministry, before plopping into the sea off the east coast.

The test might have seemed almost routine had it not appeared as a threat to South Korea, where the conservative Yoon Suk-yeol is to be inaugurated next month as president. The missiles seem designed to land anywhere in South Korea — including the major U.S. military base 40 miles south of Seoul, Camp Humphreys, headquarters of the 28,500 American troops in South Korea.

Somewhat mysteriously, the KCNA dispatch said the missiles improved “diversification of their fire missions,” a strong hint of their purpose as tactical artillery weapons that need not carry nuclear warheads.

The test-firing may well have been timed for the opening this week of annual joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises, which North Korea inevitably denounces as indicative of plans to invade the North. This year, as for the past four years, the exercises will be conducted mainly on computers, testing the ability of American and Korean forces to work together.

Mr. Yoon has promised to raise the intensity of the exercises to include troops on the ground, in the air, and at sea, as they were conducted regularly before President Trump, following his summit in Singapore with Kim Jong-un in June 2018, canceled the war games. The outgoing president, Moon Jae-in, in his quest for reconciliation and dialogue with Kim Jong-un, has not wanted to expand the war games beyond carefully muted headquarters exercises.

In Pyongyang, the North Korean leader praised what KCNA called “the national defense scientific research sector” for “continuous successes in attaining the core goals of securing the war deterrent” and “bolstering up the defense capabilities of the country” as set forth in the most recent congress of the ruling Workers Party.

Ominously, he “gave important instructions on further building up the defense capabilities and nuclear combat forces of the country” — a hint that another nuclear test might be in the offing. North Korea conducted its sixth, most recent nuclear test in September 2017.


The New York Sun

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