Authorities in Seoul said the missiles were fired in the space of less than an hour from the Sunan area in Pyongyang.

It comes just a day after US President Joe Biden left the region, following a trip that saw him vowing to bolster measures to deter North Korea.

North Korea has been test-firing a flurry of ballistic missiles since the beginning of this year.

Japan confirmed at least two launches happened on Wednesday but acknowledged there may have been more.

Japan’s Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said the first missile flew about 300km (186 miles) with a maximum altitude of around 550km, while the second, reaching as high as 50km, travelled around 750km.

Mr. Kishi criticized the launches, saying they were “not acceptable” adding that it would “threaten the peace, stability and safety of Japan and the international community”.

In a meeting convened after the missile launch, South Korea’s National Security Council called the test a “grave provocation”, the presidential office said.

The launches came hours after Mr. Biden departed for the US on Tuesday evening, after a five-day trip that saw him visit South Korea and Japan.

US and South Korean officials had earlier warned that North Korea appeared ready for another weapons test, possibly during the Biden visit.

During his visit to Seoul over the weekend, Mr. Biden and his South Korean counterpart Yoon Suk-yeol agreed to hold bigger military drills and deploy more US strategic assets if necessary to deter North Korea’s intensifying weapons tests.

Mr. Biden had said the United States was “prepared for anything North Korea does”.

The timing of these launches is not an accident – just hours after President Biden completed his trip to Asia, and days after he agreed with South Korea’s president to bolster their defenses against North Korea.

For weeks intelligence suggested North Korea was planning to test something major while the president was here. Slightly less provocatively, it has waited until he had left, but only just. Air Force One hadn’t touched down on US tarmac before the missiles were fired.

At their weekend summit, President Biden and President Yoon said they were ready to take on the threat of North Korea together. This was their first test. They have responded quickly, condemning the launches, while joint-firing missiles of their own.

This marks another escalation by North Korea, which, over the past six months has become increasingly aggressive. But the concern is over what comes next. Evidence is mounting that North Korea is preparing to test a nuclear weapon. This would be its first nuclear test in five years and a major step-up.

Missiles amidst COVID ’emergency’
The latest launches come as North Korea struggles to contain a suspected outbreak of COVID amongst its largely unvaccinated population of 25 million.

More than a million people have now been sickened by what Pyongyang is calling a “fever”, and more than 68 people have died since late April, the authorities say.

On 12 May, North Korea test-fired ballistic missiles the same day that Mr. Kim declared an “emergency” over the COVID outbreak.

South Korea has said it offered humanitarian aid, but Pyongyang is yet to respond.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-61560786

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The two projectiles were launched from Hamhung near North Korea’s central east coast at 8 a.m. and 8:05 a.m. local time, landing in the sea after flying about 190 kilometers (118 miles) and reaching an altitude of about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles), the South Korean military said.

Pyongyang has ramped up its missile testing in 2022, saying it will bolster its defenses against the United States and evaluate “restarting all temporally suspended activities,” according to North Korea’s state-run news agency KCNA.

Just two days ago, North Korea fired what were believed to be cruise missiles into the sea.

On January 17, Pyongyang test-fired “tactical guided missiles,” which are short-range ballistic missiles, KCNA said.

North Korea claimed to have a successfully test-fired hypersonic missiles on January 5 and 11, and then what were presumed to be short-range ballistic missiles from a rail car on January 14.

Pyongyang is barred by international law from developing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.

After the rail car test, a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson admonished Washington for its posture against Pyongyang’s weapons development. “If the US adopts such a confrontational stance, the DPRK will be forced to take stronger and certain reaction to it,” the spokesman said, referring to the country by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

In a recent statement carried by KCNA, a spokesperson defended North Korea’s right to bolster its arms, saying its “recent development of new-type weapon was just part of its efforts for modernizing its national defense capability.”

Leif-Eric Easley, associate professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said the recent tests show the Kim Jong Un regime is “developing an impressive diversity of offensive weapons.”

“Certain North Korean tests aim to develop new capabilities, especially for evading missile defenses. Other launches are intended to demonstrate the readiness and versatility of missile forces that North Korea has already deployed,” Easley said.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/26/asia/north-korea-missile-test-intl-hnk/index.html

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The early-morning launch came as the United Nations Security Council met in New York to discuss last week’s test of what Pyongyang called a hypersonic missile, although Seoul has cast doubt on that claim.

After an emergency meeting, South Korea’s national security council expressed “strong regret over the launch,” according to a statement from the president’s office.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters it was “extremely regrettable that North Korea continues to launch missiles.”

The United States Indo-Pacific Command issued a brief statement identical to the one it issued in response to last week’s launch.

Tuesday’s statement said in part that, “While we have assessed that this event does not pose an immediate threat to U.S. personnel or territory, or to our allies, the missile launch highlights the destabilizing impact of the DPRK’s illicit weapons program. The U.S. commitment to the defense of the Republic of Korea and Japan remains ironclad.”

There were no immediate reports of damage to Japanese aircraft or vessels, according to Japanese government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno.

“(The suspected missile) is estimated to have flown approximately up to 700 kilometers (435 miles) and landed outside of Japan’s exclusive economic zone,” he said.

Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said it had been fired from land at around 7:27 a.m. local time Tuesday (5:27 p.m. EST on Monday).

Pyongyang didn’t issue any immediate claims about its latest test.

The second one in a week came after six countries, including the United States and Japan, urged North Korea Monday to cease “destabilizing actions” ahead of a U.N. Security Council closed-door meeting. France, Britain, Ireland and Albania joined the call for North Korea to “engage in meaningful dialogue towards our shared goal of complete denuclearization.”

CBS News’ Pamela Falk at the U.N. said the six nations’ joint statement, delivered by U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, condemned North Korea for the latest missile test, which it said demonstrated the isolated nation’s “determination to expand its unlawful weapons capabilities,” which in turn heighten the “risk of miscalculation and escalation and pose a significant threat to regional stability.”

Analysts said Pyongyang had likely planned the latest launch to coincide with the U.N. meeting.

“North Korea continues testing to diversify its nuclear arsenal, but it timed the launch on the day of the UNSC meeting to maximize its political impact,” Shin Beom-chul, a researcher at the Korea Research Institute for National Strategy, told AFP.

The frequency of testing indicated Pyongyang could be fitting in the launches ahead of the Beijing Olympics next month, said Park Won-gon, a professor at the Ewha Womans University in Seoul.

North Korea has been barred from the Beijing Winter Olympics after skipping the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Games over COVID-19 concerns, a move Pyongyang has blamed on “hostile forces.”

In the decade since leader Kim Jong Un took power, North Korea has seen rapid progress in its military technology at the cost of international sanctions.

In 2021, nuclear-armed North Korea said it had successfully tested a new type of submarine-launched ballistic missile, a long-range cruise missile, a train-launched weapon, and what it described as a hypersonic warhead.

South Korea has cast doubts over Pyongyang’s hypersonic claims, saying last week’s test represented limited progress on the regime’s existing ballistic missiles.

A second hypersonic test so soon could indicate last week’s launch was actually a failure, said Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies.

“It’s hard to understand why they would carry out another test less than a week after they announced a success,” he added.

The Associated Press cited some experts as saying the latest test may have been Pyongyang’s reaction to Seoul downplaying last week’s test.

Hypersonic missiles move far faster and are more agile than standard ones, making them much harder for missile defense systems — on which the United States is spending billions — to intercept.

They were listed among the “top priority” tasks for strategic weapons in North Korea’s current five-year plan, and it announced its first test – of the Hwasong-8 – last September.

The tests come as North Korea has refused to respond to U.S. appeals for talks.

At a key meeting of North Korea’s ruling party last month, Kim vowed to continue building up the country’s defense capabilities, without mentioning America.

Instead of policy positions on diplomacy, for which Kim’s New Year statements are closely watched, he focused on food security and economic development.

Dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang remains stalled and the country is under multiple sets of international sanctions over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

The impoverished nation has also been under a rigid self-imposed coronavirus blockade that has hammered its economy.

CBS News’ Lucy Craft says the regime’s work on even more advanced rockets, including harder-to-intercept, trajectory-shifting hypersonic glide missiles, have caused particular alarm in Tokyo.

Japan’s so-called “peace constitution,” written in the wake of its defeat in World War II, restricts its armed forces to self-defense only. But as North Korea accelerates its weapons development, Japan has announced that it’s considering a fundamental shift in its governing document that would grant its military the ability to strike enemy targets, including missile sites.

Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/north-korea-ballistic-missile-launch-second-week/

The post North Korea launches second suspected ballistic missile in a week first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Tokyo defense chiefs warn in a new white paper that North Korea’s military activities pose a ‘serious and imminent threat’.

In last year’s report, Japan said it was ‘possible’ that North Korea had achieved miniaturization, but Tokyo now appears to have upgraded its assessment, according to Japanese newspaper Yomiuri.

Japan is seen as a ‘primary target’ of nearby North Korea’s weapons capabilities and fears that Pyongyang’s nuclear program is ‘growing unabated’, experts say.

The latest findings come alongside newly-released pictures which suggest a North Korean plant may be leaking hazardous waste into a nearby river.

North Korea has miniaturized nuclear warheads and made them small enough to fit on ballistic missiles, Japan believes (pictured, a recent North Korean weapons test)

North Korean strongman Kim Jong-un shakes hands U.S. President Donald Trump in an impromptu meeting in late June. Diplomacy has stalled again since then

The Japanese report highlights the lack of progress on denuclearisation talks, said Vipin Narang, a nuclear affairs expert at MIT.

‘It is Japan that is most threatened, and probably the primary target of such a capability,’ he said.

‘So openly acknowledging it underscores Tokyo’s acute fears that North Korea’s nuclear program continues to grow unabated with no foreseeable plan to slow its growth, let alone eliminate them.’

The report is due to be approved at a Cabinet meeting in Japan in mid-September.

In last year’s Defense White Paper, Japan said ‘miniaturizing a nuclear weapon small enough to be mounted on a ballistic missile requires a considerably high degree of technological capacity’.

However, they said ‘it is possible that North Korea has achieved the miniaturization of nuclear weapons and has developed nuclear warheads.’

Japan’s latest findings are similar to those of its allies, America and South Korea.

The South said in a 2018 defense paper that North Korea’s ability to miniaturize nuclear weapons ‘appears to have reached a considerable level.’

American officials have concluded for years that North Korea had likely produced miniaturized nuclear warheads.

South Korean intelligence bosses believe that the North continued to miniaturize nuclear warheads even after the Singapore summit between Trump and Kim in June 2018, according to Korean media.

At that time, North Korea committed ‘to work toward complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula’ and destroyed some tunnels and buildings at its Punggye-ri nuclear test site.

However, a second Trump-Kim meeting in February collapsed without an agreement, and North Korea has since resumed missile tests amid angry exchanges of rhetoric between the two countries.

Hopes for a breakthrough were revived when Trump and Kim shook hands in an impromptu meeting in the border zone on June 30.

At that meeting, Trump became the first sitting U.S. President to step over the border into North Korean territory.

But matters have since worsened again amid a row over military drills in South Korea.

There are close to 30,000 US troops stationed in South Korea and their annual drills with tens of thousands of South Korean soldiers have always infuriated the North.

Washington has insisted on complete denuclearisation as a condition for lifting punishing U.S. sanctions.

Stephen Biegun, the U.S. envoy on North Korea, was in Seoul this week to meet with South Korean officials, and said he was prepared to engage with North Korea ‘as soon as we hear from our counterparts.’

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