North Korea Launches 2 Missiles Into Sea to Protest U.S. War Games With South

Posted on March 2, 2015 0 Comments1,422

MARCH 2, 2015
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea flouted United Nations resolutions on Monday by launching two Scud-type ballistic missiles toward the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, as the United States and South Korea started their annual joint military drills.

The two missiles, believed to be Scud-C missiles, took off from near Nampo, a coastal city southwest of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, and flew across the peninsula before crashing into the sea off the North’s east coast, officials at the South Korean Defense Ministry said. The two projectiles flew about 490 kilometers, or about 300 miles, they said.

The ministry’s main spokesman, Kim Min-seok, condemned the North Korean missile tests as a “saber-rattling provocation” and a violation of United Nations resolutions that banned the North from testing any ballistic missile-related technology. The ban was imposed after the North’s recent tests of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles raised fears that the country was developing a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile.

The North launched its missiles on Monday shortly after a statement from its military warned that it “will never remain a passive onlooker” to the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle annual joint war games the United States and South Korea started on Monday.

The military exercises, which involved tens of thousands of South Korean and American troops and were scheduled to last until April 24, were “dangerous nuclear war drills” aimed at toppling the North Korean government, a spokesman of the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.

North Korea was ready to “bring earlier the final ruin of the U.S. imperialists and their allies,” promising to respond in kind to attacks by conventional, nuclear or electronic means, all in “Korean style.”

The United States has blamed North Korea for a cyberattack that hacked into Sony Pictures late last year. President Obama warned in January that a government like North Korea’s would collapse over time, saying that the democratic influences of the Internet would inevitably penetrate the country, isolated as it was. On Monday, North Korea took Mr. Obama’s comment as reflecting an American intention to wage a cyberwar to overthrow its reclusive government.

Although both Washington and Seoul called their annual military exercises defensive in nature, North Korea has typically responded to them with harsh rhetoric and military maneuvers of its own. It launched a series of Scud and Rodong ballistic missiles, as well as shorter-range missiles and rockets, in February and March of last year to counter the allies’ joint drills at the time. In March 2010, a South Korean warship was exploded in waters near the border with North Korea, killing 46 sailors, and Seoul attributed it to a North Korean torpedo attack.

“If North Korea provokes us, we will respond decisively and powerfully and make them sorry to the core of their bones,” Mr. Kim, the South Korean spokesman, said on Monday.

Analysts say that North Korea raises tensions on the peninsula during the joint military drills to consolidate domestic unity by inspiring fears of foreign invasion, as well as to gain leverage in dealing with Washington and Seoul.

Under its leader Kim Jong-un, North Korea has increased the number of missile and rocket tests it conducts. In January, North Korea offered to impose a moratorium on nuclear tests if the United States and South Korea suspended their joint military drills. Washington rejected the proposal.

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