SEOUL: North Korea on Saturday test-fired two projectiles that appeared to be short-range ballistic missiles, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.
The test is the third in a series of such launches this year, and comes amid growing fears over the global spread of coronavirus (COVID-19).
“Such military action by the North is very inappropriate at a time when COVID-19 has sweeping effects worldwide,” the JCS said, calling for an immediate stop to “such provocations.”
The missiles were fired at 6:45 a.m. and 6:50 a.m., and flew around 410 km at a maximum altitude of about 50 km, the JCS added.
Weapons analysts believe the missiles could be a road-based mobile launch system similar to Russia’s Iskander — projectiles that can fly horizontally then dive into a target at a near-90-degree falling angle to help avoid interception.
“The latest firing appears to be part of a missile-training exercise after deployment,” said Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies in Seoul’s Kyungnam University.
The missile launches took place just hours after North Korea confirmed it would go ahead with a session of the Supreme People’s Assembly, its leader Kim Jong Un’s rubber stamp legislature, in Pyongyang on April 10.
FASTFACT
The missile launches took place just hours after North Korea confirmed it would go ahead with a session of the Supreme People’s Assembly, its leader Kim Jong Un’s rubber-stamp legislature, in Pyongyang on April 10.
The assembly attracts nearly 700 of the regime’s top officials in one spot, which the professor said could be a show of strength amid the COVID-19 outbreak.
“I’m becoming more curious about the coronavirus situations in the North. Not sure if they’re OK or they just want to be cool,” he said.
South Korea reported 147 new cases on Friday, bringing the total number of infections to 8,799, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The death toll reached 102. North Korea has not reported a single COVID-19 infection.
The Korea Central News Agency, the North’s mouthpiece, on Saturday said Kim had guided an artillery fire competition between combined units of the army on Friday.
The state media displayed photos of him watching the exercise along with high-ranking military officers, all of them unmasked.
Gen. Robert Abrams, commander of US Forces Korea, said: “It (the North) is a closed-off nation, so we can’t say definitely that they have cases (of COVID-19). But we’re fairly certain they do.”
Abrams said North Korean forces had been under lockdown for about a month, with its air force not flying any aircraft during the period.
On Wednesday, Kim called for the building of a modern general hospital to safeguard people, the Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the ruling party, reported.
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