Thread: North Korea appears to launch ballistic missile over Japan

North Korea appeared to launch at least one missile over Japan on Tuesday, media reports said, as the government issued a rare alert calling for residents to take cover over the firing.


The Defense Ministry in Tokyo said the missile was believed to have landed around 7:50 a.m.


The launch was the nuclear-armed country’s fifth in a week.


South Korea’s military also confirmed the launch of at least one ballistic missile off its east coast.

North Korea appears to launch ballistic missile over Japan | The Japan Times

US, S.Korea conduct ‘precision bombing drill’ after N.Korea missile launched

South Korean and US fighter jets carried out precision bombing drills Tuesday, Seoul’s military said, in response to North Korea firing an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile over Japan.


“With the participation of four South Korean Air Force F-15Ks and four US Air Force F-16 fighters, South Korea’s F-15K fired two joint direct attack munition (JDAM) bombs against a virtual target at the Jikdo shooting field in the West Sea,” Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said, referring to the Yellow Sea.


The drills aimed to demonstrate the allies’ “capabilities to conduct a precision strike at the origin of provocations,” they added.

US, S.Korea conduct 'precision bombing drill' after N.Korea missile launched | Thai PBS World : The latest Thai news in English, News Headlines, World News and News Broadcasts in both Thai and English. We bring Thailand to the world

U.S. Vows to Teach Kim Jong Un a Lesson After Missile Over Japan

North Korea has test-fired a missile on its longest flight ever over Japan, inspiring the U.S. and South Korea to stage their own show of force with precision strikes on an islet in the Yellow Sea near North Korea’s southwest coast.


The tit-for-tat exchange ratcheted up a sense of crisis in which North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un is defying threats by both Washington and Seoul to punish him while he makes good on his vow never to give up his nuclear program, sanctified in a newly passed law authorizing the North to nuke its enemies whenever Kim feels like it.

The latest missile, the 39th the North has test-fired this year and the strongest since January, sent northern Japan into a panic, soaring 600 miles high over the large northern Japanese island of Hokkaido before landing in the northern Pacific 2,600 miles from its launch site near the North’s border with China.


Japanese authorities ordered a “J-Alert,” schoolchildren huddled by their desks and people swarmed to shelters. It was the first time that Japan had taken such precautions since the North fired two similar intermediate-range missiles five years ago above a populace that feels vulnerable to North Korean attack in view of historic animosities.


South Korea’s conservative President Yoon Suk-yeol, pursuing an increasingly hard line toward North Korea, was just as incensed. “Such reckless nuclear provocations,” he promised, “will be met with a resolute response from our military and our allies.” The White House came out with its own ritualistic condemnations, promising to live up to its “ironclad commitments” to its Korean and Japanese allies.

How much such rhetorical flourishes really mean was far from clear. Daniel Kritenbrink, assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, in a zoom forum right after the launch warned America would “take steps to deter North Korean provocative power,” vowing “we will deter the growing threat of North Korea’s nuclear and missile program.”


The Americans and South Koreans seemed to be holding their breath, waiting to see if Kim would order the North’s seventh nuclear test—its first since September 2017. Another nuclear test, said Kritenbrink, would “be dangerous and deeply destabilizing to the region.”


At the forum, staged by ICAS, the Institute for Corean-American Studies, Kritenbrink avoided a straight answer when The Daily Beast asked whether the U.S. and South Korea might go beyond rhetoric and attack North Korean nuclear facilities and missile launch sites.


“My intention is not to announce a new approach nor to make a threat,” he said. “I am not going to address a hypothetical situation.” He did say that no one “should doubt our resolve in pursuing sanctions and other authority,” vowing “to respond resolutely.”


Just what the hell such talk means, however, was far from clear.


Kritenbrink acknowledged both China and Russia had vetoed such measures in the UN Security Council. Both “need to do more,” he said, but that won’t happen while Kim Jong Un strongly supports Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s claims to Taiwan.


Under the circumstances, the most visible evidence of American and South Korean resolve was what the South Korean command called “joint direct attack munition” bombing by four American F-16’s and four South Korean F-15K’s on “precision targets” on a tiny uninhabited outcropping named Jikdo. The islet, often used as a firing range, belongs to South Korea even though it’s closer to North Korea.

The South Korean command said South Korea and the U.S. had thereby “demonstrated their will to respond sternly to any Northern threats as well as their capabilities to conduct a precision strike at the origin of provocations.”


Was the bombing a warning of what the Americans and South Koreans might do if Kim Jong Un escalates the testing?


“Attacking North Korea’s launch facilities would be an act of war,” said Evans Revere, a former senior American diplomat in Seoul. “It's hard to imagine the United States taking such a step unless there was solid evidence indicating that the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) was about to carry out an attack on the United States, one of our bases, or one of our allies.”


Meanwhile, said Revere, it’s “time for the U.S. and its allies to adopt a more aggressive posture towards the DPRK.” One idea would be for Tokyo and Washington to declare “any North Korean missile launched in the direction of Japan as a likely danger to Japan’s security” and “intercept and destroy future launches, depending on their assessment of the threat posed by the launch.”


In fact, the intermediate ballistic missile launched Tuesday could easily carry a nuclear warhead to U.S. bases in Hawaii and Guam, and a long-range missile could hit anywhere in North America.


“We have to be crystal clear about the growing nature of this threat,” said Kritenbrink, maintaining the U.S. and South Korea “have resumed our extended deterrence dialog” while adopting “a calibrated approach” toward North Korea.


For all the diplo-speak, however, all that’s really clear is that Kim is going to live up to his vow never to give up his nukes—and claim the right to fire one for real if threatened by his enemies, notably the U.S., Japan and South Korea. What’s not at all clear is what the U.S. will do about it.


Bruce Bennett, long-time Korean analyst at the RAND Corporation, summarized what he sees as the American position: “Strategic ambiguity rather than strategic clarity dominate our approach.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/us-vow...pan?ref=scroll

North Korea continues flurry of missile launches toward sea

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea launched a ballistic missile Thursday toward its eastern waters, South Korea’s military said.


The launch was the North’s sixth round of weapons firings in less than two weeks, which has prompted condemnation from the United States and other countries.


The country has fired nearly 40 ballistic missiles over about 20 different launch events this year, exploiting Russia’s war on Ukraine and the resulting deep divide in the U.N. Security Council to accelerate its arms development without risking further sanctions.


South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the most recent launch was made Thursday morning but gave no further details like how far the weapon flew.


The launch came two days after North Korea fired an intermediate-range missile over Japan for the first time in five years. Foreign experts said the missile fired Tuesday involved a weapon capable of reaching the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam and beyond.


The North’s flurry of weapons tests in recent days came after the United States staged military drills with South Korea and Japan in the waters off the Korean Peninsula’s east coast.


The drills on Tuesday were conducted to show a joint ability to deter a North Korean attack on the South. The allies conducted training bombing runs by F-15 strike jets using precision munitions and launched two missiles each that are part of the Army Tactical Missile System.


North Korea views such drills as an invasion rehearsal. The country launched its own missile hours before the drills in its most provocative demonstration since 2017. The nuclear-capable ballistic missile that was launched has a range capable of striking Guam, which is home to one of the largest military facilities maintained by the U.S. in Asia. North Korea in 2017 also tested missiles capable of hitting the continental United States.


After Tuesday’s launch, the United States, Britain, France, Albania, Norway and Ireland called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.


North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement Thursday that it strongly condemns "the Korean People’s Army on South Korea-U.S. joint drills escalating the military tensions on the Korean Peninsula.”


North Korea has carried out the record number of missile tests this year amid long-stalled diplomacy with the United States. Observers say North Korea aims to expand its nuclear arsenal to boost its leverage in future negotiations with the United States.

North Korea continues flurry of missile launches toward sea | Taiwan News | 2022-10-06 0642

North Korea says missile tests are practice for ‘tactical nuclear strikes’ on South Korea



North Korean state media has broken its silence over the country’s recent spate of missile tests, claiming they were part of a series of simulated procedures intended to demonstrate its readiness to fire tactical nuclear warheads at potential targets in South Korea.


The Kim regime has tested ballistic missiles seven times since September 25, the latest of 25 launch events of ballistic and cruise missiles this year, according to a CNN count, raising tensions to their highest level since 2017.


Quoting leader Kim Jong Un, who oversaw the drills, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the tests, which coincided with nearby military drills between the United States, South Korea and Japan, showed Pyongyang was ready to respond to regional tensions with by involving its “huge armed forces.”


KCNA said the series of seven drills of North Korea’s “tactical nuclear operation units” showed that its “nuclear combat forces” are “fully ready to hit and wipe out the set objects at the intended places in the set time.”


Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program and professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said North Korea’s announcements Monday indicated potential progress in its missile program.


“What I find notable is that these launches are not framed as tests of the missiles themselves, but rather of the units that launch them. That suggests these systems are deployed,” Lewis said on Twitter.

What was North Korea testing?
KCNA said on September 25, North Korea workers took part in exercises within a silo under a reservoir to practice what it described as loading tactical nuclear warheads to check the swift and safe transportation of nuclear weapons.


Three days later, they simulated the loading of a tactical nuclear warhead on a missile that in the event of war that would be used in “neutralizing airports in South Korea’s operation zones.”

On October 6, North Korea practiced procedures that could initiate a tactical nuclear strike on “the enemies’ main military command facilities” and, on Sunday, enemy ports, Pyongyang’s state media said.


Among the key military installations in South Korea is the US Army’s Camp Humphreys, the largest US military installation outside of the United States with a population of more than 36,000 US servicemembers, civilian workers, contractors and family members.

Experts say that North Korea has likely manufactured some nuclear warheads – “20 to 30 warheads for delivery primarily by medium-range ballistic missiles,” Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda of Nuclear Information Project with the Federation of American Scientists, wrote in September.


But its ability to detonate them accurately on the battlefield is unproven.

Analysts noted that with Monday’s reports, North Korea broke six months of silence on its testing program. Before that, an announcement and images of the tests were usually made available the next day.


Leif-Eric Easley, associate professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said Pyongyang had “multiple motivations” for making an announcement Monday.


Besides providing a “patriotic headline” for domestic consumption on the 77th anniversary of its ruling party, “it is making explicit the nuclear threat behind its recent missile launches,” Easley said.


“The KCNA report may also be harbinger of a forthcoming nuclear test for the kind of tactical warhead that would arm the units Kim visited in the field,” he said.


South Korean and US officials have been warning since May that North Korea may be preparing for its first nuclear test since 2017, with satellite imagery showing activity at its underground nuclear test site.




US response


The KCNA report said the recent drills, from September 25 to October 9, were designed to send a “strong military reaction warning to the enemies” and to verify and improve the country’s fighting capabilities.





In the report, Kim called South Korea and the United States “the enemies” and said North Korea doesn’t need to hold talks with them.


Kim further emphasized that Pyongyang will thoroughly monitor enemies’ military movements and “strongly take all military countermeasures” if needed, KCNA stated.


The United States, South Korea and Japan have all been active with military exercises during the North’s recent wave of drills.

A US Navy aircraft carrier strike group participated in several days of bilateral and trilateral exercises with South Korean and Japanese units that ended Saturday, a statement from the US Navy’s Task Force 70 said.


“Our commitment to regional security and the defense of our allies and partners is demonstrated by our flexibility and adaptability to move this strike group to where it is needed,” said Rear Adm. Michael Donnelly, commander of Task Force 70/Carrier Strike Group 5.


South Korea’s National Security Council on Sunday “strongly condemned” North Korea’s recent ballistic missile launches, and it said the South Korean military will further bolster its combined defense posture and deterrence through joint military drills with the US and trilateral security cooperation involving Japan.


Japan’s Joint Staff said the security environment around Japan was becoming “increasingly severe” and that drills with the US Navy were strengthening the alliance’s capability to respond to threats.

North Korea says missile tests are practice for '''tactical nuclear strikes''' | CNN

Looks like he’s pissed off someone stole his banjo.