This launch is the last of a year 2022 during which Pyongyang has multiplied armaments tests and provocations.
MO12345LEMONDE With AFP
North Korea “pulled an unidentified ballistic missile” Saturday December 31 in the direction of the Japan Sea, according to the South Korean army, a new episode of the rise of tensions between the two neighbors a few days after a Incursion of five Pyongyang drones in Seoul airspace. In Tokyo, the Ministry of Defense also reported, in a tweet, the launch of “what seems to be a ballistic missile”.
This new launch comes five days after the incursion of five North Korean drones in southern airspace, one of which had reached the north of the capital Seoul. Despite the deployment of fighter planes and attack helicopters for five hours, the South Korean army had failed to intercept these drones, which aroused many criticisms.
This air foray, the first of its kind in five years, has been described as “intolerable” by the South Korean president Yoon Suk-Yeol, who promised to make people understand to North Korea that “provocations will have always harsh consequences “for her. Thursday, the South Army carried out exercises in order to strengthen its anti-drone defense, according to the staff.
The new launch of the missile also occurs during a large annual meeting of the ruling workers’ party, during which leader Kim Jong one and other dignitaries present their political objectives for 2023 in essential fields such as diplomacy, security and economy.
Since the beginning of 2022, North Korea multiple armaments tests. In March, she tested an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), for the first time in five years. Another North Korean ICBM fell off Japan on November 18. From September 25 to October 9, Pyongyang carried out a salve of missile tests, one of which flew over Japan, which was also a first since 2017.
tactical nuclear “simulations
The regime presented this series of tests, personally supervised by Kim Jong one, like “tactical nuclear” simulations in a situation of “real war”. Then, at the beginning of November, the north still launched dozens of missiles in a few days, one of which fell near the territorial waters of South Korea, bringing the South Korean president to denounce a “de facto territorial invasion” .
The North Korean regime said that these shots were a response to the most important American-south-Korean air maneuvers in history, which took place at the same time in the south.
During a giant military parade at the end of April in Pyongyang, Kim Jong One had promised to develop the country’s nuclear forces “at the highest speed”. Seoul and Washington have since been lend to North Korea intention to carry out a nuclear test, which would be the first since 2017 and the seventh in its history. North Korean leaders say that a credible nuclear deterrence is essential to the survival of their country, which is constantly threatened with attack by the United States.
For its part, the United States, South Korea and Japan have strengthened their military cooperation and their maneuvers joined in the face of North Korean threats, especially since the announcement in September by Pyongyang of a new doctrine rendering “irreversible” its nuclear power status and authorizing it to carry out a preventive atomic strike in the event of an existential threat against its regime.
But this reinforcement has irritated North Korea even more, which, through the voice of its Minister of Foreign Affairs, choe his Hui, promised in mid-November of “ferocious” reprisals if he continued.