North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles at sea, Yonhap news agency reported on Wednesday, hours after a US nuclear-armed submarine made a stopover in South Korea, the first since forty years.
The launch was reported by South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), according to Yonhap, which said the missiles were fired early Wednesday from Sunan area in Pyongyang and traveled about 550 kilometers before sinking into the East Sea, also known as the Sea of ??Japan. The JCS condemned the shootings, calling them “significant acts of provocation” and a flagrant violation of UN Security Council resolutions.
The Japanese Ministry of Defense also recorded the shots. “We are analyzing the details, but believe they fell outside of Japan’s exclusive economic zone east of the Korean peninsula,” he said in a tweet.
The firings are the latest in a series of missile tests by Pyongyang and come as Seoul and Washington step up defense cooperation amid escalating tensions with the North. Americans and South Koreans held the first meeting of the nuclear advisory group in Seoul on Tuesday and announced that an American nuclear submarine was calling at the port of Busan (South), a first since 1981.
The launches come less than a week after North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un personally supervised the launch of the country’s newest intercontinental ballistic missile, the solid-fuel Hwasong-18.
The missile launch also comes as Washington confirmed on Tuesday that an American soldier was likely captured by North Korean soldiers after crossing the heavily guarded fortified border between the two Koreas during a visit in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ). “An American serviceman, during a visit, voluntarily and without authorization” crossed the demarcation line, said Colonel Isaac Taylor, the spokesman for American forces in South Korea.
This American soldier had previously spent two months in prison in South Korea, a Seoul official told Agence France-Presse on Wednesday. Identified by the U.S. military, Travis King, a Private Enlisted since 2021, “was released on July 10 after serving approximately two months in a South Korean prison on assault charges,” the official said. .
“We believe he is currently being held in the DPRK [North Korea, editor’s note] and are working with our counterparts in the North Korean People’s Army to resolve this incident,” he said. “We are closely monitoring the situation and investigating,” US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told reporters. Contacted by AFP, the South Korean Ministry of Defense declined to comment.
“This man gave a loud ‘ha ha ha’ and ran between buildings” after the group he was part of visited one of the buildings at the site, a witness to the scene told CBS News. “At first I thought it was a bad joke, but when he didn’t come back I realized it wasn’t a joke, then everyone reacted and it was madness,” said he said again.
“Panmunjom [a border village, editor’s note] is the site that this American most likely chose to cross in North Korea because it is the only possible place of escape during the visit to the joint security area,” said Choi Gi-il, professor of military studies at Sangji University, told AFP.
North Korea closed its borders at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and has yet to reopen them. Its security presence on its side of the border has been considerably reduced.
When AFP visited the “Joint Security Area” earlier this year, no North Korean guards were visible there. But even in this configuration, under armistice protocols, no South Korean or American personnel can cross the border to pick up the American national.
