N. Korea defies UN flak to fire missile into sea
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NORTH Korean leader Kim Jong Un guided the military’s latest rocket-firing drill, state media said yesterday, confirming the missile launch which was conducted in defiance of United Nations censure.
Saturday’s launch was the first since the UN Security Council last Thursday officially condemned Pyongyang for its recent series of ballistic missile tests, in violation of UN resolutions.
North Korea’s state news agency KCNA described the missile launch by the army as a “rocket-firing drill” to simulate a strike on military bases in South Korea where 28,500 US troops are stationed.
“(Kim) examined a firing plan mapped out in consideration of the present location of the US imperialist aggressor forces’ bases ... and under the simulated conditions of the battle to strike and destroy them before guiding the drill,” it said.
The launch was intended to mark the July 27 anniversary of the cease-fire agreement at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, KCNA said.
Seoul’s army said earlier North Korea had fired a short-range missile into the sea on Saturday night — the latest in a recent series of launches that heightened tension on the peninsula.
“North Korea fired ... a short-range ballistic missile into the East Sea (Sea of Japan) at 9:40pm,” a spokesman for Seoul’s defense ministry said. The missile, with an estimated range of 500 kilometers, was fired in the northeastern direction from Jangsan Cape in North Korea’s western coast — only 19km from the tense sea border with South Korea.
Pyongyang’s recent missile launches were carried out at locations increasingly close to the border with South Korea — a move analysts say is aimed at stepping up threats against Seoul.
The flashpoint maritime border on the Yellow Sea was a scene of several bloody naval clashes and North Korea’s shelling of a border island in 2010 that left four South Koreans, including two civilians, dead.
UN resolutions bar North Korea from conducting any launches using ballistic missile technology. The UN’s latest criticism on North Korea met with an angry response from North Korea, which called it “absolutely intolerable” and defended the missile launches as a response to “madcap war maneuvers” by the US.
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