SEOUL: North Korea fired a short-range ballistic missile Thursday, Seoul’s military said, the latest in a record-breaking blitz of launches as Pyongyang warned of a “fiercer” military response to the US and its regional allies.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the military had “detected around 10:48 am (0148 GMT) one short-range ballistic missile fired from the Wonsan area in Kangwon province.”
“The military has stepped up monitoring and guard and are maintaining utmost readiness in close coordination with the US,” it added.
Earlier this week, US President Joe Biden discussed North Korea’s spate of recent missile tests with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia.
The US leader pushed China to use its influence to rein in North Korea after the wave of missile launches raised fears the reclusive regime would soon carry out its seventh nuclear test.
Biden also held talks with his South Korean counterpart Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Sunday to discuss ways to address the threat posed by the North’s “unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs,” the White House said.
On Thursday, North Korea’s minister of foreign affairs, Choe Son Hui, slammed those discussions, saying they were “bringing the situation on the Korean peninsula to an unpredictable phase.”
“The US ‘bolstered offer of extended deterrence’ and the daily-increasing military activities of the allied forces around the Korean peninsula are foolish acts,” Choe said in a statement carried by state news agency KCNA.
The more Washington works to strengthen its security alliance with Tokyo and Seoul, “the fiercer the DPRK’s military counteraction will be,” Choe said, referring to the North by its official name.
Experts said the Thursday missile launch was timed to coincide with the statement from Pyongyang’s foreign minister.
The North “fired the missile after releasing the statement hours earlier in an attempt to justify the launch to send its message to the US and Japan,” Cheong Seong-chang, a researcher at the Sejong Institute told AFP.
Earlier this month, North Korea conducted a flurry of launches, including a November 2 barrage in which Pyongyang fired 23 missiles — more than during the whole of 2017, the year of “fire and fury” when Kim traded barbs with then US president Donald Trump.
The blitz came as hundreds of US and South Korean warplanes — including B-1B heavy bombers — participated in joint air drills, which have long sparked strong reactions from North Korea, which sees them as rehearsals for an invasion.
Experts say North Korea is seizing the opportunity to conduct banned missile tests, confident of escaping further UN sanctions due to Ukraine-linked gridlock at the United Nations.
China, Pyongyang’s main diplomatic and economic ally, joined Russia in May in vetoing a US-led bid at the UN Security Council to tighten sanctions on North Korea.
Washington has responded to North Korea’s sanctions-busting missile tests by extending exercises with the South and deploying a strategic bomber.
Pyongyang has also been under a self-imposed coronavirus blockage since early 2020, which experts say would limit the impact of any additional external sanctions.
“Choe Son Hui’s threatening statement and North Korea’s most recent missile launch are attempts to signal that Pyongyang won’t back down under international pressure,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.
But he said it was clear that Biden, Yoon and Kishida’s summit had taken “substantive steps on trilateral coordination,” even as China’s Xi ended his Covid-linked isolation with a “relative charm offensive” at the recent G20 summit.
“At some point, Chinese interests will prefer exerting pressure on Pyongyang rather than face a more strategically united US, South Korea and Japan,” Eastley added.
North Korea fires missile hours after warning of ‘fiercer’ military response
https://arab.news/97a4h
North Korea fires missile hours after warning of ‘fiercer’ military response
- US President Joe Biden earlier discussed North Korea’s spate of recent missile tests with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping
Venezuela parliament unanimously approves amnesty law
CARACAS: Venezuela’s National Assembly on Thursday unanimously approved a long-awaited amnesty law that could free hundreds of political prisoners jailed for being government detractors.
But the law excludes those who have been prosecuted or convicted of promoting military action against the country — which could include opposition leaders like Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, who has been accused by the ruling party of calling for international intervention like the one that ousted former president Nicolas Maduro.
The bill now goes before interim president Delcy Rodriguez, who pushed for the legislation under pressure from Washington, after she rose to power following Maduro’s capture during a US military raid on January 3.
The law is meant to apply retroactively to 1999 — including the coup against previous leader Hugo Chavez, the 2002 oil strike, and the 2024 riots against Maduro’s disputed reelection — giving hope to families that loved ones will finally come home.
Some fear, however, the law could be used by the government to pardon its own and selectively deny freedom to real prisoners of conscience.
Article 9 of the bill lists those excluded from amnesty as “persons who are being prosecuted or may be convicted for promoting, instigating, soliciting, invoking, favoring, facilitating, financing or participating in armed actions or the use of force against the people, sovereignty, and territorial integrity” of Venezuela “by foreign states, corporations or individuals.”
Venezuela’s National Assembly had delayed several sittings meant to pass the amnesty bill.
“The scope of the law must be restricted to victims of human rights violations and expressly exclude those accused of serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity, including state, paramilitary and non-state actors,” UN human rights experts said in a statement from Geneva Thursday.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Venezuelans have been jailed in recent years over plots, real or imagined, to overthrow the government of Rodriguez’s predecessor and former boss Maduro, who was in the end toppled in the deadly US military raid.
Family members have reported torture, maltreatment and untreated health problems among the inmates.
The NGO Foro Penal says about 450 prisoners have been released since Maduro’s ouster, but more than 600 others remain behind bars.
Family members have been clamoring for their release for weeks, holding vigils outside prisons.
One small group, in the capital Caracas, staged a nearly weeklong hunger strike which ended Thursday.
“The National Assembly has the opportunity to show whether there truly is a genuine will for national reconciliation,” Foro Penal director Gonzalo Himiob wrote on X Thursday ahead of the vote.
On Wednesday, the chief of the US military command responsible for strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats off South America held talks in Caracas with Rodriguez and top ministers Vladimir Padrino and Diosdado Cabello .
All three were staunch Maduro backers who for years echoed his “anti-imperialist” rhetoric.
Rodriguez’s interim government has been governing with US President Donald Trump’s consent, provided she grants access to Venezuela’s vast oil resources.
