SEOUL – North Korea launched two short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast on Thursday, in its first significant provocation against the United States under President Biden, US and Japanese officials said.
South Korea confirmed that North Korea launched two unidentified projectiles, but Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga was the first regional leader to identify them as “ballistic missiles”. A senior United States official also confirmed that the projectiles were ballistic missiles.
“This threatens the peace and security of Japan and the region and is a violation of United Nations resolutions,” said the Japanese leader on Twitter, referring to the UN Security Council’s ban on developing and testing missile technologies. ballistic in the North. “I protest strongly and strongly condemn.”
The missiles fell in waters between North Korea and Japan and outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, Suga said. The Japanese military said the missiles flew 280 miles, reaching a height of 62 miles.
In Tokyo and Seoul, governments met with their National Security Councils to discuss North Korea’s latest weapons test.
South Korean officials are analyzing the data collected at launch to determine the type of projectile, the country’s military said in a brief statement. The South Korean military uses the term “unidentified projectile” when they cannot immediately determine whether the object was a ballistic missile.
Over the weekend, North Korea also tested two short-range cruise missiles, South Korean defense officials confirmed on Wednesday. But that test did not violate United Nations resolutions, which prohibit North Korea from developing or testing ballistic missile technologies.
The previous test was conducted on the west coast of North Korea on Sunday, just days after the country accused the United States and South Korea of creating “a stink” on the Korean Peninsula with its annual military exercises.
North Korea’s weapons program has been a thorny problem for the last four presidents of the United States. Each approached the country with different incentives and sanctions, but not all managed to persuade it to stop building nuclear warheads and missiles to launch them.
North Korea’s weapons program has advanced rapidly. In 2017, the North fired missiles at Japan and threatened to launch an “engaging” attack near the US territory of Guam.
After the country launched its first intercontinental ballistic missiles later that year, former President Donald J. Trump hoped that direct talks with Kim would persuade the impoverished and isolated country to end its program.
Despite three face-to-face meetings, the leaders were unable to reach an agreement, depriving Trump of what he hoped would be a culminating achievement of foreign policy. Instead, the failed domes gave Kim more time to further develop his weapons, experts say.
Analysts are watching Washington closely to see if Biden’s approach to North Korea will follow that of former President Barack Obama, rather than Trump’s more direct involvement.
The Biden government has been studying how to deal with North Korea, which Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken called “a difficult problem”. When Blinken was in Seoul last week, he said the Biden government planned to complete a review of North Korea’s policy in the coming weeks, in close coordination with South Korea and Japan. He said the review included “options for pressure and potential for future diplomacy ”.
During the first few months of his presidency, Obama was also greeted by a North Korean provocation when the country detonated a nuclear bomb. Instead of negotiating, Obama opted for a policy of “strategic patience”, which meant a gradual escalation of sanctions. At his Senate confirmation hearing, Blinken said the Biden government “would review the whole approach and policy towards North Korea, because this is a difficult problem”.
In the weekend test, missiles were launched from a location near Nampo, a port southwest of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, said Ha Tae-keung, a South Korean lawmaker who was informed by intelligence officials on Wednesday -market.
When North Korea launches missile tests, they are generally celebrated by the state media and quickly confirmed by the South Korean military. But North Korean media did not report on Sunday’s test and have not yet reported on Thursday’s launch. South Korean officials said on Wednesday that they detected the test when it occurred, but decided not to report it immediately. They did not elaborate their decision.
South Korean defense officials tend to find short-range cruise missile tests less provocative than ballistic launches. They also tend not to highlight what they see as small provocations from the North when trying to promote intercorean dialogue.
North Korea’s launch of the projectile on Thursday came a day after senior Biden government officials tried to downplay the importance of the weekend missile test, which they said was part of “normal military activity” and was “on lower limit “of a provocation level. President Biden himself seemed to reject the previous test, telling reporters that “there is nothing new in what they did”.
Officials and analysts in the region have been watching North Korea closely to see if the country would seek to increase tensions to gain strength before possible negotiations with the Biden government. North Korea conducted its last ballistic missile test in March last year, when it launched two missiles off its east coast.
A new ballistic missile would indicate that the country was once again defying UN resolutions and was continuing to develop its arsenal of ballistic missiles, some of which were designed to carry nuclear warheads.
North Korea has rejected any serious dialogue with Washington since the second summit between its leader, Kim Jong-un, and President Trump ended abruptly in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February 2019. They met again on the north-south border. in June of the same year, but failed to narrow their differences.
Pyongyang has made several hostile statements to the United States in the past few days, and analysts said the missile test could be part of a subtle pressure tactic, increasing the possibility that North Korea will return to a new cycle of tensions on the peninsula to squeeze out. the Washington grants.
The Biden government has stepped up efforts to work more closely with its regional allies, South Korea and Japan, to better deal with North Korea’s growing arms capacity, as well as with a rising China. Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III visited Seoul and Tokyo last week as part of the government’s first high-level diplomatic trip to Asia.
But North Korea said it felt no need to respond to the recent attempts by the Biden government to open a dialogue, dismissing them as a “retardation trick”. In a message to President Xi Jinping of China, North Korea’s leader, Mr. Kim, emphasized the need to strengthen unity between the two countries in order to “face hostile forces”.
North Korea has not carried out any long-range ballistic missile tests for more than three years. But during a military parade in October, it unveiled a new untested intercontinental ballistic missile that looked bigger and more powerful than the intercontinental ballistic missile tested in late 2017, before Kim started diplomacy with Trump.
At a party meeting in January, Kim promised to further advance his country’s nuclear capabilities, declaring that he would build new solid-fuel ICBMs and make his nuclear warheads lighter and more accurate.
Makiko Inoue contributed reporting from Tokyo, and Eric Schmitt of Washington.