North Korea on Saturday fired a ballistic missile into the sea, according to its neighbors’ militaries, extending Pyongyang’s streak of weapons tests this year amid a prolonged freeze in nuclear negotiations with the United States.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile fired from an area near the North Korean capital flew about 270 kilometers eastward at a maximum altitude of 560 kilometers before landing in waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan. It said U.S. and South Korean intelligence officials were closely analyzing the launch.
North Korean state media said last week’s launch was designed to test a camera system it plans to install on a spy satellite that is under development. Officials in Seoul convened an emergency National Security Council meeting and called on the North to refrain from actions that further raise tensions in the face of an international crisis created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and at a time when South Korea is holding a presidential election.
Lee Jae-myung, the candidate for the ruling center-left party who has called for a conciliatory approach toward Pyongyang, criticized the launch but reiterated his commitment to dialogue. In a statement on Facebook, he promised he wouldn’t “tolerate actions that raise tensions,” without specifying how he would respond.
“The regime may be unhappy with Washington coordinating global efforts against Russian aggression in Ukraine and disappointed with Seoul’s inward focus ahead of the South Korean presidential election,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha University in Seoul. But negotiations have stalled since 2019, when the Americans rejected North Korea’s demands for major sanctions relief in exchange for dismantling an aging nuclear facility, which would have amounted to a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities.
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