North Korea launches ten ballistic missiles as Trump questions alliance with Seoul

North Korea launched ten ballistic missiles into the Sea of ​​Japan on Thursday morning, just a few hours after Donald Trump relativized his support for the southern neighbor and showed his respect for Kim Jong Un, whom he has promised to see before the end of the year.

Donald Trump claimed this week that North Korea has 57 nuclear warheads, but the real number could be more than double, according to South Korea. His Defense Minister, Ahn Gyu Bak, corrected the American president this Thursday in Seoul when questioned in a parliamentary session: "According to our numbers, they would have between 80 and 120 nuclear weapons."

He then clarified that this is the figure, in the public domain, proposed by a South Korean institute specialized in the matter. However, he was careful not to spread the opinion of the South Korean armed forces themselves. “I am not authorized to reveal that here.”

While the world is still watching the Strait of Hormuz, Trump diverted attention to South Korea on Sunday night, announcing the curtailment of the annual joint maneuvers that, due to the time difference - in Seoul it was already after six in the morning on Monday - they were already starting. More recently, he has pointed out that the dictator Kim Jong Un has "57 very powerful nuclear weapons", something that according to him "would never have happened" if he had been president during the previous legislature.

“I know Kim Jong Un very well,” repeated Donald Trump, who refers to the North Korean dictator with greater respect than the president of ally South Korea, Lee Jae Myung. Trump justified the reduction of the planned maneuvers, in which more than 18,000 soldiers participate, by the desire not to provoke someone with whom he has “a fantastic relationship,” as he repeats.

The powerful sister of the North Korean leader, in fact, would have referred disdainfully to the curtailment of the maneuvers. “What difference does it make?” In fact, Pyongyang expressed its displeasure last week with the launch of a projectile over the Sea of ​​Japan, which was followed by a second test this Thursday, with a dozen short-range ballistic missiles. Despite the reduction in the number of battalions, the official North Korean media showed their indignation at “the qualitative leap” and “offensive” of the exercises. Indeed, a simulation of the siege and capture of Pyongyang was planned, which would have been cancelled, according to South Korean media, due to the program being cut.

Trump also referred disdainfully to the fact that the cost of the maneuvers fell massively, “as usual,” on the US. Something that is only true if the US travel expenses, which the South Korean army does not incur, are computed. And something that also does not take into account that the South Korean treasury paid for 90% of the 10.8 billion dollars that Camp Humphreys, the largest US military base abroad, cost.

Likewise, 86% of South Korea's arms imports come from the US. But that is where the relationship is taking a turn, from dependence to integration. Indeed, the South Korean defense industry is taking a great export leap, boosted by the excellence of its technological environment. On the other hand, the US is considering manufacturing its warships abroad for the first time and the conditions seem tailor-made for South Korean shipyards. When Trump pushes, it is always in exchange for something.

The South Korean president, Lee Jae Myung, far from being offended by Trump's outrage, has appreciated that he is actively pursuing "moving from hostility and confrontation to building peace on the Korean peninsula."

Lee said in January that North Korea was producing nuclear material at a rate sufficient to add 20 warheads annually. The previous president of his party, Mun Jae In, who experienced the opening under the previous Trump administration, wrote in his memoirs, published a couple of years ago, that Kim Jong Un had confessed to him that his atomic weapons were only for defensive purposes, that he had no intention of using them and that he did not want his daughter's generation to inherit that burden.

The Swedish organization Sipri reduces the number of North Korean warheads to 60. But if the South Korean Defense Minister's estimate is true, the North Korean arsenal could have surpassed the 90 warheads of Israel - another undeclared nuclear power - and, at the current rate, could overtake Pakistan and India in the next decade. Of course, there is consensus that their nuclear-capable projectiles are relatively pedestrian, although improvements are observed and they would already be capable of reaching US territory.

It should be noted, finally, that Trump's statements - who yesterday reaffirmed his willingness to meet with Kim Jong Un this year - do not occur in a vacuum. This week, China's Prime Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wang Yi, traveled to Seoul with the express request that South Korea not take sides between Beijing and Washington. No less disturbing in the American capital is the news that, this Saturday, a South Korean freighter will set sail from Busan with the officially sponsored mission of reaching the ports of Western Europe through the Russian Arctic.