Seoul retrieves North Korean missile fired across NLL

North Korea

Published: 07 Nov. 2022, 18:15

Seoul retrieves North Korean missile fired across NLL

A warning issued by the South Korean Joints Chiefs of Staff last Wednesday urges people on Ulleung Island to evacuate after a North Korean missile was spotted flying toward the South Korean island earlier that day. [YONHAP]

Seoul on Monday said it retrieved what is presumed to be the debris of a North Korean missile that flew south of the inter-Korean maritime border.

Kim Jun-rak, a spokesperson for the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that the military collected the remains on Sunday on the south side of the Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the East Sea.

The South Korean Navy’s Gwangyang salvage and rescue ship combed through the waters from Friday through Sunday using unmanned underwater robots, said Kim.

The debris was said to have been sent to “relevant agencies” for investigation.

The military gave no further information on the debris, including why it thought it belonged to the short-range missile that Pyongyang fired last Wednesday.

The North Korean missile was among three short-range ballistic missiles that Pyongyang fired on Wednesday morning from Wonsan, Kangwon Province.

One of those missiles landed in international waters south of the NLL, the first time that a North Korean ballistic missile flew south of the de-facto maritime border.

South Korea's military said the missile landed 26 kilometers (16 miles) south of the NLL, 57 kilometers east of Sokcho and 167 kilometers northwest of Ulleung Island.

Residents of Ulleung were urged to take shelter underground.

Pyongyang followed up with more missile tests that day, launching nearly 25 short-range ballistic missiles and surface-to-air missiles in total.

Those provocations were carried out on the third day of Vigilant Storm, a large combined military exercise by Seoul and Washington that mobilized more than 240 aircraft including F-35A stealth fighters, F-15K jets and KF-16 jets from the South Korean Air Force and F-35B stealth fighters, EA-18 electronic warfare aircraft, KC-135 tankers and U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft from the U.S military.

The North fired numerous missiles and artillery shots throughout the Vigilant Storm exercise, which began on Oct. 31 and wrapped up on Saturday, including an intercontinental ballistic missile that failed partially in flight.

The South Korean military on Monday said it was kicking off its annual computer-simulated Taegeuk exercise for four days with a special focus on responding to North Korean nuclear and missile threats.

While Seoul has stressed that the exercise was defensive in nature, Pyongyang has called it a practice run to invade the North, which suggests that the regime could carry out more provocations this week.

The South Korean military has held a military exercise every month since last August, either alone or with the United States. The North has responded to each exercise with missile tests and artillery shots, many of which violated an inter-Korean military agreement signed in 2018.

BY LEE SUNG-EUN [lee.sungeun@joongang.co.kr]