North Korea test-fires new anti-aircraft missile, its fourth weapon test in a month
North Korea test-fires new anti-aircraft missile: Launch is fourth weapon test in a month as Kim Jong Un continues to push arms development
North Korea has successfully tested a new anti-aircraft missile, state media said Country’s main newspaper published an image of the weapon being fired Friday It said the rocket contains advanced rudder controls and other new technologyIt is the fourth weapon Kim Jong Un has tested in a month, even as the dictator hints that more peace talks with the South could be possible
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North Korea has successfully fired a new anti-aircraft missile, state media said Friday, the latest in a flurry of weapons tests by the nuclear-armed nation.
The anti-aircraft missile had a ‘remarkable combat performance’ and included twin rudder controls and other new technologies, the official Korean Central News Agency said.
A picture in the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper showed the missile ascending at an angle into the sky from a launch vehicle on Thursday.
It is the fourth weapon that Kim Jong Un‘s regime has tested in a month, even as the despotic leader tees up the possibility of renewed peace talks with the South.
North Korea has test-fired a new kind of anti-aircraft missile (pictured) as the Hermit Kingdom continues updating its military arsenal
Until recently, Kim had held off from testing weapons – apparently biding his time since the change in US administrations in January.
In September, the North launched what it said was a long-range cruise missile, and earlier this week tested what it described as a hypersonic gliding vehicle, which South Korea’s military said appeared to be in the early stages of development.
And on Wednesday, the North’s leader Kim Jong Un decried Washington’s repeated offers of talks without preconditions as a ‘petty trick’, accusing the Biden administration of continuing the ‘hostile policy’ of its predecessors.
South Korea’s defence ministry told AFP it was unable to immediately confirm the latest launch.
Anti-aircraft missiles are much smaller than the ballistic missiles the North is banned from developing under United Nations Security Council resolutions, and harder to detect from afar.
Pyongyang is under multiple international sanctions over its weapons programmes, which have made rapid progress under Kim, including missiles capable of reaching the whole of the US mainland and by far its most powerful nuclear test to date.
The latest tests have sparked international condemnation, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying they created ‘greater prospects for instability and insecurity’.
The North has now tested four weapons in a month even as Kim Jong Un opens up the prospect of further peace talks with the South
The United States, Britain and France have called a UN Security Council meeting on North Korea set to take place Friday.
It was originally due on Thursday but was delayed by Russia and China, who asked for more time to study the situation, a diplomatic source said.
Beijing is Pyongyang’s key ally and in normal times its biggest provider of trade and aid, although the North has since early last year been under a self-imposed blockade after it shut its borders to defend itself against the coronavirus pandemic.
The North has a long history of using weapons tests to ramp up tensions, in a carefully calibrated process to try to forward its objectives.
With its latest actions, Kim was looking to ‘test the waters with Washington’ and its ‘threshold for weapons provocations’, Soo Kim of the RAND Corporation told AFP.
‘He may wish to see how much he can get away with until the Biden administration starts to flinch,’ she added.
The South’s President Moon Jae-in has recently reiterated his calls for a formal declaration that the Korean War is over – hostilities ceased in 1953 with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
Moon has only a few months left in office and Soo Kim pointed out he could be looking to secure an ‘accomplishment’ with the North before his term runs out.
‘Kim may be playing to his strengths – and the Moon administration’s weaknesses – by taking things up a notch on the provocation ladder.’
The anti-aircraft missile launch comes just days after Kim test-fired a new kind of nuclear missile with what the North said is a ‘hypersonic’ warhead
Talks between Pyongyang and Washington have been effectively at a standstill since the collapse of a 2019 Hanoi summit between Kim and then-president Donald Trump over sanctions relief and what North Korea would be willing to give up in return.
Washington and Seoul are security allies, and the United States stations around 28,500 troops in the South to protect it from its neighbour.
In August, the two held joint military drills that always infuriate Pyongyang.
Under President Joe Biden, the United States has repeatedly declared its willingness to meet North Korean representatives anywhere, at any time, without preconditions, while saying it will seek denuclearisation.
But in a speech to the Supreme People’s Assembly, the North’s rubber-stamp parliament, Kim condemned the offers as ‘no more than a petty trick for deceiving the international community and hiding its hostile acts’, according to KCNA.
The new administration was pursuing the same ‘military threats’ and ‘hostile policy’ as the past, but in ‘more cunning ways and methods’, he said.
Nonetheless, he expressed a willingness to restore North-South communication lines in early October.
North Korea has not shown any willingness to give up its arsenal, which it says it needs to defend itself against an invasion by the United States.
