Finance
North Korea fired a Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in a display of its strategic forces’ “toughest response posture” against “aggressive” massive combined drills by the US and South Korea, according to Pyongyang’s state media on Friday.
According to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, Kim Jong-un “guided” the launch on Thursday with his young daughter Ju-ae, as it served as an opportunity to “give a stronger warning to the enemies intentionally escalating the tension” on the peninsula (KCNA).
It cited the region’s “unstable security environment” as a result of “provocative and aggressive large-scale war drills,” referring to the ongoing South Korea-US Freedom Shield (FS) exercise, which is accompanied by major field trainings, according to Yonhap News Agency.
The drill involving the Hwasong-17 was “aimed at confirming the mobile and normal operation and reliability of the country’s nuclear war deterrent”, the KCNA said.
It confirmed “the war readiness of the ICBM unit and the exceptional militancy of the DPRK’s strategic forces and strictly verified their reliability,” it added, using the acronym for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
According to the KCNA, the ICBM, which took off from Pyongyang International Airport, reached a maximum altitude of 6,045 km and flew 1,000.2 km for 4,151 seconds before landing precisely in the open waters off the East Sea.
The Hwasong-17, dubbed the “monster missile” by locals, was apparently launched at a high angle.
It came just hours before South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol met Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo, as part of Washington’s push to strengthen trilateral security cooperation with the two key regional allies in order to counter the North’s nuclear and missile threats.
Kim was quoted as emphasizing the need to “strike fear into the enemies” and warning that the allies’ continued military moves against the North will only bring about a “irreversible, grave threat” to themselves.
He emphasized that the North will “react to nuclear weapons with nukes and frontal confrontation in kind” and called for “strictly maintaining the rapid response posture of the strategic forces to cope with any armed conflict and war”.
Source:OCN
