Tag: North Korea

Here is the latest provocation by North Korea as they likely try and build up tensions leading up towards their suspected nuclear test:

North Korea test-fired suspected artillery pieces into the sea on Sunday, South Korea’s military said, days after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for greater defense capability to cope with outside threats.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that it detected several flight trajectories believed to be North Korean artillery on Sunday morning. It said South Korea maintains a firm military readiness in close coordination with the United States amid boosted surveillance on North Korea.

Associated Press

You can read more at the link.

North Korea’s missile launches may get the bigger headlines, but their robust artillery is the real danger to South Korea due to the 25 million people in the Seoul region living within artillery range.

It seems logical that the Kim regime’s playbook would eventually have them build up to a nuclear test:

South Korea’s National Security Council (NSC) strongly condemned the North’s latest missile launches Sunday, saying Pyongyang will “gain nothing” from its continued saber-rattling.  
   
The remarks came shortly after the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the North fired eight short-range ballistic missiles into waters off its east coast. (……)

The latest missiles also came a day after Seoul and Washington completed a three-day combined naval exercise involving the U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan. The exercise was held in international waters off the Japanese island of Okinawa. 

The looming question among military experts is when the regime will carry out a nuclear test.  
   
South Korean officials have for weeks floated the possibility of an imminent nuclear experiment, which would be the seventh of its kind if North Korea follows through. Officials in Seoul and Washington have mentioned recent satellite images of ongoing tunnel excavation and construction work at Punggye-ri as signs that the regime is preparing for another test.  
   
The Punggye-ri test site, located in a mountainous region in the country’s remote North Hamgyong Province, is the North’s only known nuclear test site and the location of six nuclear weapons tests between October 2006 and September 2017. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

This weekend North Korea decided to attack the fish in the East Sea again:

North Korea on Sunday launched eight short-range ballistic missiles off its eastern coast, according to the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The missiles were fired between 9:08 a.m. and 9:43 a.m. from the Sunan area, where North Korea’s international airport is located, the Joint Chiefs said in a text message to reporters. Further details were not immediately available from the military.

South Korea’s military is prepared for additional missile tests and is “maintaining a full readiness posture” and working closely with U.S. forces, the Joint Chiefs said.

The launches mark the 17th round of missile tests so far this year by North Korea and its first in June.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

It looks like a seventh nuclear test by North Korea will happen in the near term:

North Korea has been testing a nuclear triggering device apparently in preparation for what would be the country’s seventh nuclear test, a senior presidential official said Wednesday.

The experiments have been taking place at a location away from Punggye-ri, the site of all six North Korean nuclear tests to date, said Kim Tae-hyo, first deputy director of the National Security Office, without naming the place.

“Operation tests of a nuclear detonation device, which are to prepare for the seventh nuclear test at Punggye-ri, are being detected,” Kim told reporters. “The possibility of an imminent nuclear test in the next day or two is low, but after that, there is certainly a possibility.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The North Korean sent off some fireworks after President Biden left the region:

 North Korea fired three ballistic missiles Wednesday morning off its eastern coast, prompting the United States and South Korea to respond with a show of force of their own launches.

North Korea’s missiles, fired hours after President Joe Biden wrapped up his first presidential trip to Seoul and Tokyo, came from the Sunan area, where the regime’s airport is located, according to the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

The three missiles were fired at 6 a.m., 6:37 a.m. and 6:42 a.m. The first, believed to be an intercontinental ballistic missile, flew roughly 224 miles at a peak altitude of 336 miles; the second “disappeared” at an altitude of 12 miles; and the third, believed to be a short-range ballistic missile, flew about 472 miles at an altitude of 37 miles, according to South Korea’s military.

Stars & Stripes

Here is what the US and the ROK did in response:

Following the launches, U.S. Forces Korea announced in an unsigned press release that it had fired surface-to-surface missiles toward its eastern coast “to demonstrate the ability of the combined [U.S.-South Korea] force to respond quickly to crisis events.”

USFK, which is responsible for roughly 28,500 troops on the Korean Peninsula, said in the release it used the Army’s Tactical Missile System and South Korea’s Hyunmu-2 missile system for the live-fire exercise.

South Korea’s military also conducted an armed exercise consisting of 30 South Korean F-15K jets, the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement Wednesday.

You can read more at the link, but the missile tests are what I thought was the most likely provocation the Kim regime would do. What to watch for next is a nuclear test. I think this will be tied to any increased rhetoric from the US and ROK condemning the North in the coming days. I guess we will see what happens.

However, if you ask someone on the Korean left they will say that the ROK has not appeased the Kim regime enough. If you just appease them a bit more than peace in our time will break out:

President Yoon Suk-yeol said the time for appeasing North Korea is over in an interview with CNN, and that he expects any new inter-Korean talks to be initiated by leader Kim Jong-un.    
   
“I think the ball is in Chairman Kim’s court,” Yoon told CNN’s Paula Hancocks in an exclusive interview aired Monday. “It is his choice to start a dialogue with us.”  
   
The remarks followed Yoon’s first summit with U.S. President Joe Biden in Seoul Saturday, an opportunity for the allies to coordinate the policies on Pyongyang amid increased missile threats from the North. Some military analysts believe North Korea could be preparing for a possible seventh nuclear test or an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch.    
   
Yoon said that he is against bending over backwards to please North Korea. “Just to escape North Korean provocation or conflict temporarily is not something that we should do,” said Yoon. “Many call it servile diplomacy, but the policy of being over-concerned about the other side’s feelings does not work and has proven to be a failure in the past five years.”  
   
He was referring to the policy of his predecessor Moon Jae-in, whose emphasis on dialogue and peaceful reconciliation led to the first North-U.S. summit in 2018. Talks collapsed in February 2019 after a second North-U.S. summit in Hanoi. Yoon has taken a more hard-line stance, more in line with the Biden administration’s “calibrated and practical” approach to the North.    
   
But Yoon stressed, “I do not want North Korea to collapse. My hope is for North Korea to prosper alongside South Korea.”  
   
Yoon said he wants a “shared and common prosperity on the Korean Peninsula” but underscored that enhancing North Korea’s nuclear capability is neither helpful nor conducive to “maintaining international peace.”  

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but all the decades of North Korean appeasement has accomplished is provide funding for the Kim regime’s nuclear and missile programs. Besides providing regime security, the Kim regime is now using these same programs to try and extort money from the ROK and the international community.