North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's sister Kim Yo Jong said on Saturday that an intermediate-range strategic missile had been tested earlier in the morning, hours after South Korea reported a ballistic missile launch towards the sea.
“North Korea's Kim Yo Jong says an intermediate-range strategic missile was used for the drill,” state news agency KCNA reported.
Kim Yo Jong, a director of North Korea’s ruling party, said an intermediate-range missile was used in a drill involving a “strategic weapon” towards the sea off the country’s east coast. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the drill, carried out by “a firepower sub-unit undertaking an exclusive special mission”, she said, according to Reuters.
Citing South Korean and Japanese assessments of the missile’s flight distance, Jong said they showed limitations in tracking capabilities. “Whenever we applied the wave-like trajectory mode to missiles, the enemy failed to track the targets from their first skip points,” she said, adding that the weapon could alter its flight orbit at low altitude using artificial intelligence technology. “In other words, this means that there is no way to avoid this attack,” she said.
Earlier, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff had said the missile was launched from the Wonsan area on the country's eastern coast and flew more than 700 km (435 miles) towards the East Sea, also known as the Sea of Japan. South Korean and US militaries were analysing the specifics of the launch.
Japan's defence ministry said the missile landed outside the country's exclusive economic zone. The South Korean military said it had strengthened surveillance and vigilance for possible further launches and was closely sharing information with the US and Japan.
Seoul's presidential national security office called on Pyongyang to halt its repeated ballistic missile launches, describing them as a violation of UN Security Council sanctions and “a serious act that does nothing to help manage the current situation”.
The US Pacific Command said the launch “does not pose an immediate threat to U.S. personnel or territory, or to our allies.”
The launch came a day after Kim Yo Jong dismissed South Korean demands for an apology over a September 21 landmine blast that injured three South Korean soldiers near the military demarcation line. South Korea and the US-led UN Command said a joint inspection found that the blast was caused by mines planted by North Korea. The command later said North Korea had violated the armistice agreement that ended the 1950-53 Korean War.
Kim Yo Jong rejected Seoul's demands as “utterly pathetic” and said North Korea intended to cut ties with South Korea permanently. In a separate KCNA report, she called Seoul “despicable” and described a proposal by South Korean unification minister Chung Dong-young for border talks as a “wild dream and unilateral jargon”.
The latest launch follows a series of North Korean military activities in recent weeks, including missile tests, live-fire exercises and the commissioning of a new warship. Wonsan was also the site of a September 20 test that North Korean state media described as involving a hypersonic missile system.
South Korean president Lee Jae Myung has urged Pyongyang to return to dialogue, while US President Donald Trump's recent outreach has raised concerns in Seoul about its role in any future nuclear negotiations. North Korea has so far rejected Trump's overtures, saying Washington must first abandon what Pyongyang calls its “hostile policy” and drop denuclearisation as a precondition for talks.
