North conducts 'surprise launching drill' of ICBM, vows tit-for-tat responses to South

North Korea

Published: 19 Feb. 2023, 18:08

North conducts 'surprise launching drill' of ICBM, vows tit-for-tat responses to South

In footage broadcast by the North's state-controlled Korean Central Television, a Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) is launched from a transporter erector launcher at Sunan Airport in Pyongyang on Saturday. [YONHAP]

North Korea conducted a “surprise launching drill” of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and vowed heightened tit-for-tat responses to deterrence measures by South Korea and the United States, state media reported Sunday.

The launch prompted the allies to conduct a joint air drill involving a B-1B strategic bomber later Sunday.

The state-controlled Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in an English-language report that a Hwasong-15 ICBM was fired in a “surprise ICBM launching drill” at Sunan airport in Pyongyang on Saturday afternoon.

Launched at a high angle, the missile flew 989 kilometers (614 miles) for almost 67 minutes, peaking at an altitude of 5,768.5 kilometers, according to the KCNA.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) told reporters Saturday that the missile landed in the East Sea.

Video footage captured by a F-15 fighter jet from Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force that was released by Tokyo’s defense ministry showed what appeared to be bright, burning debris from the North Korean ICBM falling off the coast of Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s four main islands.

The launch is the second time the North has fired a ballistic missile this year, and its first of an ICBM since it successfully tested a Hwasong-17 ICBM last November.

The KCNA said that the drill demonstrated Pyongyang’s ability to launch a “fatal nuclear counterattack on the hostile forces” and constituted “clear proof of the sure reliability of our powerful physical nuclear deterrent.”

In its reference to the ICBM launch as a “drill,” state media sought to draw attention to the regime’s ability to fire missiles with little warning.

"The drill was suddenly organized without previous notice under an emergency firepower combat standby order given at dawn of February 18," the KCNA said.

Saturday’s test came after North Korea warned Friday that it would undertake “unprecedented strong responses” if the United States and South Korea go ahead with planned military exercises.

Military officials from Seoul and Washington are scheduled to conduct a tabletop exercise at the Pentagon next week based on scenarios in which the North conducts a nuclear attack.

The allies are also due to hold their regular springtime Freedom Shield exercise next month, as well as large-scale field drills.

On Sunday, Kim Yo-jong, Kim Jong-un’s sister and deputy director of the Workers’ Party propaganda department, warned that the North would “watch every movement of the enemy and take corresponding and very powerful and overwhelming counteraction against its every move hostile to us," in a separate English-language statement carried by KCNA.

“[The United States] should stop all the actions posing threats to the security of our state and refuse to tarnish the DPRK's dignity, always thinking twice for its own future security,” she said in the statement, referring to the North by the acronym for its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

She also said that the North has “no intention to stand face to face” with the South, echoing Pyongyang’s statements that it will not engage with Seoul, despite the latter’s requests for talks to revive inter-Korean exchanges, such as reunions of family members separated by the 1950-53 Korean War.

Seoul’s Unification Ministry, which is charged with inter-Korean relations, blasted Kim’s statement and blamed the North for escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

“It is deplorable that [North Korea] forgets that its reckless nuclear and missile development is responsible for the deterioration of the current situation, and that it is employing sophistry to shift the blame onto Korea and the United States,” the ministry said in a statement.

“We warn again that isolation from the international community will only intensify if the North Korean regime continues to provoke and threaten its people's livelihoods and human rights in the face of severe food shortages,” the ministry said, in an apparent reference to recent reports that food insecurity in the North is at its worst since the large-scale famine that took place in the 1990s.

The North’s ICBM launch led South Korea and the United States on Sunday to stage joint air defense exercises, which included F-35A stealth fighters and F-15K jets from the South and U.S. F-16 fighters and a B-1B strategic bomber, to demonstrate Washington’s “ironclad” commitment to defending Seoul.

“The training this time demonstrated the South Korea-U.S. combined defense capabilities and posture featuring the alliance’s overwhelming forces, through the timely and immediate deployment of the U.S. extended deterrence assets to the Korean Peninsula,” the JCS said in a press release.

The foreign ministers of South Korea, the United States and Japan held an emergency meeting on Saturday in Munich on the sidelines of an international security conference and condemned the North’s latest action, vowing their close cooperation to counter the North’s military threat.

“North Korea will face more powerful sanctions by the international community. We urge the North to immediately stop its provocations and return to denuclearization talks,” South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin said after talks with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Japan’s Foreign Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa.

The U.S. government also condemned Saturday’s missile launch as “a flagrant violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions” in a statement by White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson.

“While [the US Indo-Pacific Command] has assessed [the launch] did not pose an immediate threat to U.S. personnel, or territory, or to our allies, this launch needlessly raises tensions and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region,” Watson said.

“It only demonstrates that the DPRK continues to prioritize its unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs over the well-being of its people.”

BY MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]