The US and South Korean military conducted one of the most missile drills to counter North Korea’s missile test.
According to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, SouthKorea and the United States launched four missiles off the east coast of the Korean Peninsula on Wednesday in response to North Korea’s missile launch over Japan.
On Tuesday, North Korea fired a missile over Japan for the first time in five years, stopping trains and sparking warning messages for residents. The Japanese government warned citizens to take cover as the missile flew over and past Japan into the Pacific Ocean.
Initially, South Korea and the US responded to North Korea’s missile provocation with a precision bombing exercise on Tuesday. The launch involved a South Korean F-15K fighter jet firing two air-to-surface munitions in a firing range west at a virtual target.
The South Korean Joint Chiefs asserted that Wednesday’s launch included four ATACMS surface-surface missiles that can fly around 200 miles (320 kilometers).
Shortly after launch, the South Korean Hyunmoo-2 missile failed and crashed during the drill, but fortunately, no one was hurt.
The National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, John Kirby, said that “the launch was designed to demonstrate that the US and its allies have the military capabilities and are ready to respond to provocations by the North.”
“This is not the first time we’ve done this in response to provocations by the North to make sure that we can demonstrate our own capabilities,” Kirby told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.”
He added, “We want to see the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, (North Korean leader Kim Jong Un) hasn’t shown an inclination to move in that direction; quite frankly, he’s moving in the opposite direction by continuing to conduct these missile tests which are violations of security council resolutions.”
The United States and Japan also responded to the North Korean launch on Tuesday — with Japan Air Self-Defense Force and US Marine Corps fighter jets flying over the East Sea, best known as the Sea of Japan.
US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said North Korea’s latest launch posed “a grave challenge to peace and the stability of Japan, the region and the international community.” The European Union called it a “reckless and deliberately provocative action.”
Analysts say there is little the United States and its allies can do to stop North Korea’s relentless weapons launch.
Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Project at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said, “The North Koreans are in no mood to talk. They’re in the mood of testing and blowing things off.”
Lewis added, “North Korea will keep conducting missile tests until the current round of modernization is done. I don’t think a nuclear (test) explosion is far behind.”
In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Kirby said North Korea is progressing. “Every time the Kim regime launches a weapon, they learn, they get better, they get more capable,” Kirby said.
Ankit Panda, the senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said North Korea seemed to be set on a mission to develop nuclear weapons progressively.
“Denuclearization is now, I think, in the dustbin of history as a failed policy,” Ankit said. “There is no practical plan at this point, especially in the short term, to bring North Korea to the negotiating table and pursue denuclearization.”
Upon the request of the United States, the UN Security Council will meet on Wednesday to discuss North Korea. However, China and Russia opposed an open meeting of the 15-member body, arguing that the council’s reaction should be conducive to easing the situation on the Korean Peninsula.