SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea fired a ballistic missile and hundreds of artillery shells toward the sea Friday and flew warplanes near the tense border with South Korea, further raising animosities triggered by the North’s recent barrage of weapons tests.
The North Korean moves suggest it is reviving an old playbook of stoking fears of war with provocative weapons tests before it seeks to win greater concessions from its rivals.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement the short-range missile lifted off from the North’s capital region at 1:49 a.m. Friday and flew toward its eastern waters.
It was North Korea’s 15th missile launch since it resumed testing activities Sept. 25. North Korea said Monday its recent missile tests were simulations of nuclear strikes on South Korean and U.S. targets in response to their “dangerous” military exercises involving a U.S. aircraft carrier.
Soon after the latest missile test, North Korea fired 130 rounds of shells off its west coast and 40 rounds off its east coast. The shells fell inside maritime buffer zones the two Koreas established under a 2018 inter-Korean agreement on reducing tensions, South Korea’s military said.
On Friday afternoon, South Korea’s military said North Korea fired 90 additional shells off its east coast. It said it also spotted about 300 other North Korean artillery launches from two separate western coastal areas. In both cases, the North Korean shells were believed to have landed in the buffer zones again, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Observers said it was North Korea’s third and most direct violation of the 2018 agreement, which created buffer zones and no-fly areas along their land and sea boundaries to prevent accidental clashes. South Korea’s Defense Ministry said it earlier sent North Korea a message asking it not to violate the agreement again.
North Korea separately flew warplanes, presumably 10 aircraft, near the rivals’ border late Thursday and early Friday, prompting South Korea to scramble fighter jets. There were no reports of clashes between the two countries. It was reportedly the first time that North Korean military aircraft have flown that close to the border since 2017.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said North Korea’s provocations are becoming “indiscriminative’” but that his country has massive retaliation capabilities that can deter actual North Korean assaults to some extent.
“The decision to attack can’t be made without a willingness to risk a brutal outcome,” Yoon told reporters. “The massive punishment and retaliation strategy, which is the final step of our three-axis strategy, would be a considerable psychological and social deterrence (for the North).”
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said Friday it imposed sanctions on 15 North Korean individuals and 16 organizations suspected of involvement in illicit activities to finance North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs.
