North Korea Fires a Short-Range Missile after a Year

North Korea has recently launched its first short-range missile into the sea after repeated failure of its talk with the US on the nuclear issue over a year. The missile has shown its capability by travelling between 70 to 200 kilometres towards the East Sea also known as the Sea of Japan.

Hodo Peninsula, where the firing took place on Saturday, has been used as a training area for live-fire testing, training exercises for artillery and coastal defence cruise missiles by North Korea since the 1960s.

South Korea’s Joint Chief of Staff said in a statement, that North Korea “fired a number of short-range projectiles from its Hodo peninsula near the east coast town of Wonsan to the northeastern direction from 9:06 am (0006 GMT) to 09:27 am today”.

The latest firing by North Korea has come just a day after South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha has warned Pyongyang to show “visible, concrete and substantial”, denuclearisation action if it wants relief from any kind of sanctions from the US.

Director of Korean Studies at the Center for the National Interest, Harry J. Kazianis says, “Chairman Kim has decided to remind the world specifically the United States that his weapons capabilities are growing by the day. My fear is that we are at the beginning stages of a slide back to the days of nuclear war threats and personal insults, a dangerous cycle of spiking tensions that must be avoided at all costs”.

The talks between the US and North Korea has been on halt after the failure of the summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump in February this year. The February talks failed when North Korea demanded immediate sanctions relief from the US, but the two sides disagreed on what North Korea should give up in return.

Earlier this week, North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui has warned Washington of an “unwanted outcome” if it did not adjust its economic sanctions on North Korea.

Also, while celebrating the anniversary of the Panmunjom summit, North Korea’s state media KCNA has said US and South Korea “keep pushing the situation of the Korean peninsula and the region to an undesirable phase”, criticizing their joint military exercises recently.

North Korea did not carry out any missile tests since last year, after Kim Jong-un held his first historic summits with the leaders of the United States and South Korea. The last missile launched by North Korean was in November 2017.