North Korea fires 'unidentified projectile' — South's military
SEOUL, South Korea — Nuclear-armed North Korea fired an 'unidentified projectile' into the sea off its east coast, the South's military said Tuesday.
No further details were immediately available from the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff.
A Japanese defence ministry spokesman told AFP on condition of anonymity that the projectile "appears to be a ballistic missile".
The launch is the latest in a series of mixed messages from the North, coming days after leader Kim Jong Un's influential sister Kim Yo Jong, a key adviser to her brother, dangled the prospect of an inter-Korean summit.
But she insisted that "impartiality" and mutual respect would be required, calling for the South to "stop spouting an impudent remark".
She condemned as "double standards" Southern and US criticism of the North's military developments, while the allies build up their own capacities.
In recent days, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who has only months left in office, reiterated at the UN General Assembly his longstanding calls for a formal declaration of an end to the Korean War.
The North invaded the South in 1950 and hostilities ceased three years later with an armistice rather than a peace treaty, leaving them technically still in a state of conflict.
Pyongyang is under multiple sets of international sanctions over its banned nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programmes.
Its ambassador to the United Nations insisted that it had the right to test weapons.
"Nobody can deny the right to self-defense for the DPRK", Kim Song told the UN General Assembly in New York.
"We are just building up our national defence in order to defend ourselves and reliably safeguard the security and peace of the country."
'Heinous human rights abuser'
Pyongyang has already carried out several missile launches this month, one involving a long-range cruise missile and another which the South's military called short-range ballistic missiles.
Seoul also successfully test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile for the first time, making it one of a handful of nations with the advanced technology.
Talks between Pyongyang and Washington have been at a standstill since a 2019 summit in Hanoi between leader Kim and then-president Donald Trump collapsed over sanctions relief and what the North would be willing to give up in return.
The North has subsequently repeatedly excoriated the South and its president Moon, and blown up a liaison office on its side of the border that Seoul had built.
"It looks like North Korea wants to see how genuine Seoul is when it comes to its willingness to improve inter-Korean ties -- and to officially end the Korean War," Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, told AFP.
"Pyongyang will monitor and study Moon's reaction after today's launch and decide on what they want to do on things such as restoring the inter-Korean hotline," he added.
The administration of US President Joe Biden has repeatedly said that it is willing to meet North Korean officials anywhere, at any time, without preconditions, in its efforts to seek denuclearisation.
But the North has not shown any willingness to give up its arsenal, which it says it needs to defend itself against a US invasion.
On Monday, the North's official Korean Central News Agency carried an article calling the United States "the most heinous human rights abuser in the world" for its sanctions policies on various countries.
The North was also due to open a session of its rubber-stamp parliament, the Supreme People's Assembly, on Tuesday.
South Korean officials were briefing the White House Thursday on the outcome of their pathfinding meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Seoul has already publicized that North Korea offered talks with the United States on denuclearization and normalizing ties, a potential diplomatic opening after a year of escalating tensions over the North's nuclear and missile tests. The rival Koreas also agreed to hold a leadership summit in late April.
Top Trump administration officials were getting a chance to hear firsthand from South Korean national security director, Chung Eui-yong, who led the delegation that went to Pyongyang. — Associated Press
South Korea's defense ministry says Thursday it was "closely monitoring" a North Korean nuclear reactor site after local media reported its operations had been temporarily suspended, potentially to extract weapons-grade plutonium.
The Donga Ilbo newspaper reports earlier in the day that intelligence sources in Seoul and Washington had detected signs the five-megawatt reactor in Yongbyon had temporarily stopped operations late last month.
The suspension could be an indication that spent fuel rods are being reprocessed to extract plutonium for use in nuclear weapons, the report cited a government source as saying. — AFP
State media reports that North Korea's rubber-stamp legislature has enshrined the country's status as a nuclear weapons power in the constitution.
"The DPRK's nuclear force-building policy has been made permanent as the basic law of the state, which no one is allowed to flout with anything," leader Kim Jong Un said at a meeting of the State People's Assembly that was held Tuesday and Wednesday, the KCNA news agency says.
DPRK is the acronym for the country's formal name. — AFP
State news agency KCNA reports that North Korea announced it had built a "tactical nuclear attack submarine" as part of its effort to strengthen its naval force.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un presided over the unveiling ceremony on Wednesday, saying the new sub was part of a "push forward with the nuclear weaponization of the Navy in the future", according to KCNA.
The launching of submarine No. 841, named the Hero Kim Kun Ok, "heralded the beginning of a new chapter for bolstering up the naval force of the DPRK", the KCNA report said, referring to the country by the abbreviation of its formal name. — AFP
State-controlled media reports Sunday that North Korea staged a "simulated tactical nuclear attack" drill at the weekend with mock atomic warheads attached to two long-range cruise missiles that were test-fired into the ocean.
The Korean Central News Agency says the operation early Saturday was a "counteraction drill" in response to joint military activity by US and South Korean forces that KCNA said has escalated tensions in the region.
"A firing drill for simulated tactical nuclear attack was conducted at dawn of September 2 to warn the enemies of the actual nuclear war danger," KCNA reports. — AFP
Seoul's military says North Korea fired multiple cruise missiles off its west coast on Saturday, the latest in a string of recent Pyongyang military actions.
The launches come three days after the North launched a pair of short-range ballistic missiles as part of a "tactical nuclear strike drill" prompted by the annual US-South Korean Ulchi Freedom Shield military exercises, which always infuriate the reclusive regime.
Pyongyang views such the drills as a rehearsal for invasion while the two allies say they are defensive in nature. — AFP
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