South Korea says North Korea has launched a long-range ballistic missile toward the North’s eastern waters.
South Korea's military called the launch “a grave provocation" and said the South Korean and U.S. authorities agreed to maintain robust, combined defense postures.
North Korea’s long-range missile program targets the mainland U.S, though it also has a variety of other shorter-range nuclear-capable missiles designed to hit South Korea and Japan, both key American allies in the region. Missiles with built-in solid propellants would be easier to move and hide, making it difficult for opponents to detect their launches in advance. All of North Korea's previous ICBM tests used liquid fuel.
In a statement Monday night, Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean sister Kim Jong Un, warned the United States of “a shocking incident” as she claimed that the U.S. spy plane flew over the North’s eastern exclusive economic zone eight times earlier in the day. She claimed the North scrambled warplanes to chase away the U.S. plane.
“Kim Yo Jong's bellicose statement against U.S. surveillance aircraft is part of a North Korean pattern of inflating external threats to rally domestic support and justify weapons tests,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. “Pyongyang also times its shows of force to disrupt what it perceives as diplomatic coordination against it, in this case, South Korea and Japan’s leaders meeting during the NATO summit.
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