SEOUL: North Korea test-fired at least three rounds of projectiles off its east coast on Monday, a week after firing two short-range missiles, the South Korean military said.
“The militaries of South Korea and the United States are analyzing the specifics of the projectiles, and the allied forces are closely monitoring the situation in case there are additional launches,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, adding that the test was believed to be part of the North’s routine winter drills.
The projectiles were launched from the North’s eastern province of Sondok at 7:36 a.m. local time and flew around 200 kilometers at an altitude of around 50 kilometers, according to the JCS.
The National Security Council said the North’s continued artillery drills “do not help efforts to bring peace to the peninsula.”
On March 2, the North test-launched similar projectiles under the supervision of its leader Kim Jong Un.
When South Korea's presidential office expressed “strong regrets” over last week's test, Kim Jong Un’s younger sister and policy adviser Yo-jong called the reaction “idiotic.”
Kim Jong Un sent a reconciliatory letter two days later to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, expressing his best wishes for the South in its battle against the coronavirus outbreak.
A North Korea expert said the country’s flip-flopping stemmed from its anxiety over a deadlock in lifting sanctions in exchange for the regime’s commitment to nuclear disarmament.
“The recent tests appeared to be aimed at enhancing the capacities of the North’s new weapons systems with a focus on shortening the firing interval of projectiles so as to make them hard to be detected and intercepted,” Kim Dong-yup, a professor at Kyungnam University in Seoul, told Arab News.
“In my prediction, the tests are not unrelated to the spread of the coronavirus in the capital of Pyongyang. I wonder if Kim’s movement to the eastern part of the country for the past 10 days would, by any chance, be an escape from the epidemic.”
While the North claims no coronavirus cases have been reported on its soil, concerns are rising it might be trying to conceal the true scale of the outbreak.
North Korea's state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported on Monday that 10,000 citizens have been placed under quarantine.
