North Korea fired ballistic missiles into the sea on Sunday, accelerating its missile launches amid Iran war tensions and talk of possible meetings with the US and South Korea.
\nPyongyang\u2019s intense missile activity \u2014 this was the fourth such launch this month and the seventh of the year \u2014 is meant to display its self-defence capabilities while gaining international leverage, some experts said.
\n\u201cThe missile launches may be a way of showing that \u2014 unlike Iran \u2014 we have self-defence capabilities,\u201d said South Korean former presidential security adviser Kim Ki-jung.
\n\u201cThe North also appears to be exerting pressure preemptively and make a show of force before engaging in dialogue with the United States and South Korea,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Iran war, Trump visit loom over launches
\nThe seven-week-old US-Israeli war against Iran, which Washington says aims to curb Tehran\u2019s nuclear programme, could reinforce Pyongyang\u2019s nuclear ambitions, experts and former South Korean officials say.
\nUS President Donald Trump, preparing for a summit in China next month, and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung have repeatedly expressed interest in holding talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. There are no publicly known plans for any meetings.
\nLee recently conveyed regret to the North for drone incursions from the South, receiving rare praise from Pyongyang.
\nSunday\u2019s missiles were fired from near the city of Sinpo on North Korea\u2019s east coast toward the sea around 6:10am (2:10am PKT) and flew about 140km, South Korea\u2019s military said in a statement.
\nJapan\u2019s government posted on social media that the missiles were believed to have fallen near the east coast of the Korean Peninsula, and no incursion into Japan\u2019s exclusive economic zone had been confirmed.
\nSouth Korea\u2019s presidential Blue House convened an emergency security meeting, calling the launches a provocation that violated UN Security Council resolutions, according to media reports. It urged Pyongyang to \u201cstop the provocative acts\u201d.
\nIt was not clear what kind of ballistic missiles were fired, but Sinpo has submarines and equipment for test-firing submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The North last fired a ballistic missile from a submarine in May 2022, and it flew as far as 600km.
\nNorth Korea has made \u201cvery serious\u201d advances in its ability to turn out nuclear weapons, with the probable addition of a new uranium enrichment facility, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday.
\nIn late March, North Korean leader Kim said Pyongyang\u2019s status as a nuclear-armed state was irreversible and expanding a \u201cself-defensive nuclear deterrent\u201d was essential to national security.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
North Korea fired ballistic missiles into the sea on Sunday, accelerating its missile launches amid Iran war tensions and talk of possible meetings with the US and South Korea. Pyongyang\u2019s intense missile activity \u2014 this was the fourth such launch this month and the seventh of the year \u2014 is meant to display its self-defence …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":96567,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96589"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96599,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96589\/revisions\/96599"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}