A dozen North Korean planes flew over the vicinity of the border with South Korea before the launch
The Army of North Korea launched this Thursday, early Friday already in Pyongyang, a ballistic missile unspecified towards the Sea of Japan -known as the East Sea in South Korea-, according to South Korean military sources. This launch, which occurred around 2:00 a.m. (local time), occurred after a dozen North Korean military planes threateningly flew over territory near the border with South Korea. These maneuvers were responded by Seoul with the deployment of F-35 fighters to the border and other military assets.
This has been confirmed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff of South Korea (JCS), which has subsequently added that the North Korean Armed Forces have also launched some 170 artillery rounds towards maritime “buffer zones” established under a 2018 inter-Korean military tension reduction agreement, as reported by the South Korean Yonhap news agency. Seoul has detailed that it has detected around 130 artillery shots towards the Yellow Sea –between China and the Korean peninsula– and approximately 40 shots towards the East Sea –between the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago–.
The JCS has criticized these shots as a “clear” violation of the Comprehensive Military Agreement (CMA), signed by both Seoul and Pyongyang in 2018 to reduce tensions, as the shots have occurred on the maritime border delineated under the pact. “These continuous provocations by North Korea are acts that undermine peace and stability not only on the Korean peninsula, but also in the international community,” the JCS said in a message to journalists, collected by the aforementioned agency. “In this regard, we gravely warn (the North) and strongly urge it to stop them immediately,” the message continues.
Japan: “Unacceptable escalation”
The new escalation of the conflict has quickly received a response from the Japanese Defense Ministry, which has accused Pyongyang of “unilaterally escalating” tensions. “It is unacceptable,” said Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada. Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has called a meeting of the emergency team in order to collect all possible information about what happened and confirm the possible damage that the North Korean missile may have caused, according to Japanese radio and television NHK. Already on Wednesday, the North Korean leader himself, Kim Jong Un, supervised the deployment of two long-range ballistic missiles, which have flown over the waters of the Sea of Japan to finally hit the target, 2,000 kilometers away.
In recent weeks, North Korea has launched several ballistic missiles at Tests Banned by UN Security Council Resolutions, in response to the US-Korean military maneuvers that it considers an invasion rehearsal. In the early hours of October 4, Pyongyang launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile that flew over Japanese territory to fall into the Pacific Ocean, outside Japanese airspace, an event that had not happened since 2017.
Pyongyang calls it a “response” to Seoul’s “provocations”
A spokesman for the North Korean General Staff said Friday that the launch of a ballistic missile this morning is “a military countermeasure” in response to “provocative actions” by South Korea, whose troops, according to Pyongyang, carried out artillery exercises along the border on Thursday. “According to a report on enemy movements at the front, the South Korean army executed fire artillery fire for about 10 hours near the advanced defense zone of the Fifth Corps of the Korean People’s Army (corps stationed in front of the border with the South) on October 13,” said the statement released by the state agency KCNA. “Taking note of this provocative action by the South Korean military in the frontline area, we take strong military countermeasures,” the text added. “We send a stern warning to the South Korean military that incites military tension,” the statement continued.