At the beginning of 2022 the series of missile tests undertaken by North Korea does not seem to have an end. But this time, in the seventh session since the beginning of January, the level of provocation by the Pyongyang regime has risen, in an escalation that has prompted South Korean President Moon Jae-in to publicly intervene to ask his northern counterpart Kim Jong- one to stop and return to dialogue.
North Korea’s missile offensive. That’s why Kim Jong-un is increasingly “Rocket Man”
by our correspondent Gianluca Modolo
It happened that North Korea launched a more powerful bomb than recent precedents into the Sea of Japan. According to Japanese official sources, the missile started from an internal North Korean location, reached a height of 2,000 kilometers, in about 30 minutes of flight it traveled 800 to sink into the sea close to the area of exclusive economic competence of Tokyo.
Data that identifies it as a medium-range ballistic missile, the most powerful exhibited by Pyongyang since Biden, the true recipient of the message according to observers, became president of the United States. But also as the longest-range missile tested by North Korea since 2017, the year in which three ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) rockets were tested with the intention of demonstrating to the US that Pyongyang had now reached the potential to hit them on the their territory.
North Korea fires two more missiles. The US condemnation arrives
Subsequently, Kim imposed a self-restraint on the experimentation of long-range missiles, a relaxing gesture with which to favor the dialogue started with Trump badly interrupted in 2019. In light of the latest test, South Korean President Moon said that North Korea is one step away from definitively making waste paper of that moratorium and moving from propaganda demonstrations to real experimentation with nuclear weapons and long-range missiles.
According to analysts, the renewed display of muscle would be Kim’s same old script: to put pressure on America with the aim of shaking Biden and inducing him to resume talks on denuclearization and disarmament to arrive at a relaxation of the sanctions affecting the Pyongyang regime, whose effects have inevitably been exacerbated by the pandemic. For the moment, the United States has limited itself to renewing the condemnation of the North Korean tests asking for a stop to similar destabilizing actions. But pointing out, through the Indo-Pacific military command, that the missile launched by Pyonyang poses no immediate threat to American soil.