US Slams North Korea’s Missile Launch
Washington, Feb 27: The United States has condemned the North Korea’s ballistic missile launch carried out on Sunday and urged Pyongyang to refrain from ‘destabilising acts’, the US Indo-Pacific Command said.
“We are aware of the ballistic missile launch by North Korea this morning and are consulting closely with South Korea and Japan, as well as other regional allies and partners, the Command said in a statement. “The US condemns this launch and calls on North Korea to refrain from further destabilising acts.
While we have assessed that this event does not pose an immediate threat to US personnel, territory, or that of our allies, we will continue to monitor the situation. The US commitment to the defense of South Korea and Japan, remains ironclad,” the statement added.
The launch was detected from Sunan area in Pyongyang at morning and the missile flew about 300 kilometers at a top altitude of 620 kilometer, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.
The latest launch, the first in just under a month, came 10 days ahead of South Korea’s presidential election and amid the armed conflict in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion of the country last week, Yonhap News Agency reported. “For other specifics on the missile, the intelligence authorities of South Korea and the US are conducting a detailed analysis,” the JCS said.
“Our military is tracking and monitoring related (North Korean) movements and maintaining a readiness posture,” it added. The North is presumed to have fired the missile from a Transporter Erector Launcher at a steep angle from the Sunan airfield, informed sources said, raising speculation it could be a medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM), Yonhap said in its report.
The missile appears to be similar to the Pukguksong-2 missile, a road-mobile solid-fuel MRBM, known to be the North’s ground-based variant of its submarine-launched ballistic missile, the Pukguksong-1, according to observers, the South Korean News agency added.
The Sunan airfield is the place where the North had launched self-proclaimed tactical guided missile on January 17. The missile, named the KN-24, was seen as modeled after the US’ Army Tactical Missile System.
Last month, the North Korea had launched seven rounds of missile, including an intermediate-range ballistic missile on January 30. Soon after the latest launch, Seoul’s JCS Chairman Gen. Won In-choul and Gen. Paul LaCamera, the head of the South Korea-US Combined Forces Command, held video talks and reaffirmed their commitment to ensure the allies’ “solid” defence posture, the JCS was cited as saying by Yonhap. While convening an emergency standing committee session, the Presidential National Security Council also expressed ‘grave regrets’ over the missile launch.
