North Korean state media on Sunday said leader Kim Jong Un observed a live-fire drill of long-range multiple rocket launchers and unspecified tactical guided weapons, a day after South Korea\u2019s military detected the North launching several unidentified short-range projectiles into the sea off its eastern coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pyongyang\u2019s official Korean Central \nNews Agency said Kim expressed \u201cgreat satisfaction\u201d over Saturday\u2019s \ndrills and stressed that his front-line troops should keep a \u201chigh alert\n posture\u201d and enhance combat ability to \u201cdefend the political \nsovereignty and economic self-sustenance of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \nweapons launches were a likely sign of Pyongyang\u2019s growing frustration \nat stalled diplomatic talks with Washington meant to provide coveted \nsanctions relief in return for nuclear disarmament. They also \nhighlighted the fragility of the detente between the Koreas, which in a \nmilitary agreement reached last September vowed to completely cease \u201call\n hostile acts\u201d against each other in land, air and sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPraising\n the People\u2019s Army for its excellent operation of modern large-caliber \nlong-range multiple rocket launchers and tactical guided weapons, he \nsaid that all the service members are master gunners and they are \ncapable of carrying out duty to promptly tackle any situation,\u201d the KNCA\n paraphrased Kim as saying. \u201cHe stressed the need for all the service \nmembers to keep high alert posture and more dynamically wage the drive \nto increase the combat ability so as to defend the political sovereignty\n and economic self-sustenance of the country and … the security of the\n people from the threats and invasion by any forces.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The launch \ncomes amid a diplomatic breakdown that has followed the failed summit \nearlier this year between Trump and Kim over the North\u2019s pursuit of \nnuclear bombs that can accurately target the U.S. mainland. The North \nprobably has viable shorter-range nuclear armed missiles, but it still \nneeds more tests to perfect its longer-range weapons, according to \noutside analysts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump added: \u201cHe also knows that I am with him \n& does not want to break his promise to me. Deal will happen!\u201dWhite \nHouse Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement that the United \nStates was aware of North Korea\u2019s actions and would continue to monitor \nthe situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
South Korea said in a statement it\u2019s \u201cvery \nconcerned\u201d about North Korea\u2019s weapons launches, calling them a \nviolation of last year\u2019s inter-Korean agreements to reduce animosities \nbetween the countries. The statement, issued after an emergency meeting \nof top officials at the presidential Blue House in Seoul, also urged \nNorth Korea to stop committing acts that would raise military tensions \nand join efforts to resume nuclear diplomacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
North Korea wants \nwidespread sanctions relief in return for disarmament moves that the \nUnited States has rejected as insufficient. In a sign of Pyongyang\u2019s \ngrowing frustration, it has recently demanded that U.S. Secretary of \nState Mike Pompeo be removed from nuclear negotiations and criticized \nnational security adviser John Bolton. North Korea said last month that \nit had tested a new type of unspecified \u201ctactical guided weapon,\u201d which \nexperts said could be anything from anti-tank weapons to cruise \nmissiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
North Korea could choose to fire more missiles with \nlonger ranges in coming weeks to ramp up its pressure on the United \nStates to come up with a roadmap for nuclear talks by the end of this \nyear, said Nam Sung-wook, a professor at Korea University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNorth\n Korea wants to say, \u2018We have missiles and nuclear weapons to cope with \nsanctions,\u2019 \u201c Nam said. \u201cThey can fire short-range missiles a couple \nmore times this month, and there is no guarantee that they won\u2019t fire a \nmedium-range missile next month.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There has not been a confirmed \nballistic missile test by North Korea since its November 2017 test of an\n intercontinental ballistic missile, which demonstrated potential \ncapability to reach deep into the U.S. mainland. That year saw a string \nof increasingly powerful weapons tests from the North and a belligerent \nresponse from President Donald Trump that had many in the region fearing\n war.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
North Korean state media on Sunday said leader Kim Jong Un observed a live-fire drill of long-range multiple rocket launchers and unspecified tactical guided weapons, a day after South Korea\u2019s military detected the North launching several unidentified short-range projectiles into the sea off its eastern coast. Pyongyang\u2019s official Korean Central News Agency said Kim expressed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60660,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60659"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60661,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60659\/revisions\/60661"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}