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26-03-2022
PYONGYANG: North Korea says it test-fired its biggest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on the orders of leader Kim Jong Un to boost its defences and prepare for a “long confrontation” with the United States, state media reported on Friday.
Kim, dressed in a black leather jacket and sunglasses, oversaw the Thursday launch of what was described as a “new-type” of ICBM, the Hwasong-17.
The first full ICBM test by nuclear-armed North Korea since 2017 drew swift condemnation from South Korea and Japan, as well as the US. United Nations chief Antonio Guterres condemned the launch as a “clear violation” of Security Council resolutions.
According to state media, the weapon was launched from Pyongyang International Airport, travelled up to a maximum altitude of 6,248 km (3,880 miles) and flew a distance of 1,090 km (680 miles) during a 67-minute flight before falling into the Sea of Japan.
Kim ordered the test because of the “daily-escalating military tension in and around the Korean peninsula” and the “inevitability of the long-standing confrontation with the US imperialists accompanied by the danger of a nuclear war,” the official news agency for North Korea, KCNA, reported.
“The emergence of the new strategic weapon of the DPRK would make the whole world clearly aware of the power of our strategic armed forces once again,” Kim said.
“Any forces should be made to be well aware of the fact that they will have to pay a very dear price before daring to attempt to infringe upon the security of our country,” he added, according to KCNA.
North Korea has carried out nearly a dozen missile tests since the start of the year that analysts say are aimed at forcing the US to accept North Korea as a nuclear power and remove the international sanctions that had crippled the economy even before Pyongyang sealed its borders because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“South Korea has already launched missiles in response, and the US and South Korea are expected to respond to North Korea’s provocations through military exercises,” Kim Jong-ha, a security analyst at Hannam University in South Korea, told Al Jazeera. “As a result, inter-Korea and US-North Korea relations will be strained for the time being.”
‘Ambitions exceed self-defence’
The latest launch comes at a particularly delicate time.
Yoon Suk-yeol, South Korea’s newly-elected conservative president who has promised a more robust policy towards Pyongyang, is due to take office in May, while the attention of the US, the South’s key ally, is focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“The Kim regime is determined not only to keep South Korea hostage to military threats that can evade Seoul’s missile defenses and preemptive strike capabilities; it aims to expand its nuclear reach over the American homeland to deter Washington from coming to the defense of U.S. allies,” Leif-Eric Easley, associate professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said in an email. “North Korea is nowhere near initiating aggression on the scale of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But Pyongyang’s ambitions likewise exceed self-defense as it wants to overturn the postwar security order in Asia.”
The UN Security Council is expected to hold an emergency meeting on the test on Friday, but condemnation or new sanctions could be hard to achieve amid divisions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Russia’s veto. (Int’l News Desk)
