South Korean officials indicated that North Korea has test-fired five short-range missiles into the sea on Sunday. The weapons test comes amid what Hyung-Jin Kim of the Associated Press referred to as “dimming prospects” for resumption of discussions between the rival Koreas.
While North Korea routinely tests missiles as well as rockets, their latest series of launches come at a time when both countries are at odds over terms for a possible summit meeting between their two leaders, South Korean President Park Geun-hye and North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un.
The missiles were fired from a coastal town located on the northern side of the 38th parallel. They flew roughly 125 miles before they landed in waters off of the country’s eastern coast, according to a South Korean Defense ministry official who was cited in the AP report on condition of anonymity, as the official cited department rules. The official also indicated that Sunday’s missile tests constituted the second round of North Korean missile tests this year.
North Korea indicated on Saturday that it had test-fired a new anti-ship cruise missile and that their country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, had personally observed the firing. The South Korean official indicated that this particular launch had taken place on Friday and that it wasn’t immediately known whether the missiles fired on Sunday were of the same type as the anti-ship cruise missile fired in the prior launch.
The Korean War ended with an armistice instead of a peace treaty and as a result, the Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war.
The FBI implicated North Korea in the cyber-attack on Sony Entertainment. The North Korean deputy ambassador to the U.N. then indicated that the U.S. should provide evidence implicating them in the Sony hack and the United States responded with proof derived from the NSA’s successful hacking efforts targeting Pyongyang which began years before North Korean hackers attacked Japan’s Sony Corporation.
Economic Times reported that the North Korean rocket tested on Friday was an ultra-precision intelligent rocket which is intended to be deployed across the country’s navy, according to state media. The report indicated that the exercise was carried out by the North’s East Sea fleet.
The ultra-precision anti-ship rocket blasted off from a rocket boat. The intelligent rocket precisely sought, tracked and hit the ‘enemy’ ship after taking a safe flight
What do you think of North Korea’s latest missile tests?
