BEIJING – After yesterday’s cross-exchange of launches between the two Koreas with the 23 missiles fired from Pyongyang – record in one day – the North started shooting again this morning. Triggering the alarm in some Japanese cities.
At least three ballistic missiles launched: two at short range and one suspect Icbm (an intercontinental ballistic missile, designed to carry a nuclear warhead) that Japan first declared it had flown over its territory, only to rectify it. The South Korean army reports that the launch of the latter missile has failed. The alarms for the evacuation however rang this morning in three Japanese prefectures, those of Miyagi, Yamagata and Niigata, the television programs interrupted to tell people to take cover.
“The repeated missile launches from North Korea are an outrage and absolutely cannot be forgiven,” says the Japanese prime minister. Fumio Kishida. Also condemned by Usa e South Korea: “deplorable and immoral” launches, say South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Cho Hyun-dong and US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. According to the South Korean military, the long-range missile flew about 760 km at a maximum altitude of 1,920 km. Those in short range for 330 km at a maximum altitude of 70 km.
The show of strength by Kim Jong-un arrives as South Korea and the United States have begun the largest air exercises ever, the Vigilant Storm, which will last until tomorrow. Exercises that Pyongyang has always seen as a provocation and a prelude to an invasion. “The North Koreans are trying to keep up, to show that they are capable of fighting a nuclear war,” Ankit Panda of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told NkNews. Yesterday there North Korea fired 23 missiles, record. And for the first time one of them fell south of the northern border line (Nll) just 57 kilometers east of the South Korean coast.
What does Marshal Kim hope to achieve? The escalation is for Kim to test the weapons in his arsenal and send the message that missile development is a “sovereign right” that should be accepted by the rest of the world. Strengthening is a way for Kim to put pressure above all on Washington and Seoul, to accept his country as a nuclear state, a recognition that the dictator considers necessary to obtain – at least in part – the lifting of international sanctions. However, the Marshal has no intention of denuclearizing: he knows that his arsenal is his “life insurance”. The proof came two months ago with the new law that allows Pyongyang to “preemptively” strike “hostile forces”. It is a scheme that Kim has already used in the past, in 2010 and 2017: first to raise tensions to a very worrying level, then to ask for commitment and concessions from South Korea, Japan and the United States.
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With the US distracted by the Ukrainian question, Kim raises the bar – feeling “forgotten” by the West – shifting the focus to this part of the world and making the security dynamics of East Asia even more precarious. Unlike five years ago, at the time of the last major North Korean escalation, however, the international situation has changed: the new equilibrium that emerged from the Russian war in Ukraine; the new administration in the White House and the one in the Blue House in Seoul where, after the mandate of the more conversational Moon Jae-in, the “hawk” Yoon Suk-yeol arrived; the intensification of alliances between the US, South Korea and Japan, and Tokyo’s more “active” role on the global stage. Marshal Kim must also take this into account.