Kim Jong Un oversees Missile-firing drills, tells troops to be alert

Kim Jong Un oversees Missile-firing drills, tells troops to be alert

AgenciesUpdated: Wednesday, May 29, 2019, 08:22 PM IST
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Seoul: North Korean state media on Sunday showed leader Kim Jong Un observing live-fire drills of long-range multiple rocket launchers and what appeared to be a new short-range ballistic missile, a day after South Korea expressed concern the launches were a violation of an inter-Korean agreement to cease all hostile acts.

Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency said Kim expressed “great satisfaction” over Saturday’s drills and stressed his front-line troops should keep a “high alert posture” and enhance combat ability to “defend the political sovereignty and economic self-sustenance of the country”. The weapons launches were a sign of Pyongyang’s growing frustration at stalled diplomatic talks with Washington to provide coveted sanctions relief in return for nuclear disarmament.

They also highlighted the fragility of the detente between the Koreas, which in a military agreement reached last September vowed to completely cease “all hostile acts” against each other in land, air and sea. South Korea said it’s “very concerned” about North Korea’s weapons launches, calling them a violation of the agreements to reduce animosities between the countries.

The statement, after an emergency meetingon Saturday of top officials at the presidential Blue House in Seoul, also urged North Korea to stop committing acts that would raise military tensions and join efforts to resume nuclear diplomacy. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff initially said on Saturday the North launched a single missile from the site near the coastal town of Wonsan but later said in a statement that “several projectiles” had been fired.

In its updated assessment on Sunday, the JCS did not confirm if the North fired a ballistic missile, but said a “new tactical guided weap­on” was among the weapons tested by the North. Meanwhile, cracking down against UN sanctions violations, South Korea on Saturday held a Panamanian-flagged ship at the port city of Busan for allegedly illegally transferring oil to North Korea.

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