President Yoon Suk Yeol warns North after missile launched

North Korea

Published: 16 Mar. 2023, 15:01

President Yoon Suk Yeol warns North after missile launched

Footage broadcast by Pyongyang's Korean Central Television (KCTV) shows one of the two ballistic missiles that were launched from Jangyon, South Hwanghae Province on Tuesday. [YONHAP]

President Yoon Suk Yeol warned Thursday that North Korea “will certainly pay” for its “reckless provocations” at a morning National Security Council (NSC) meeting that took place just after a long-range ballistic missile launch from the North was detected.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it detected the launch of a suspected long-range ballistic missile at a high angle from the Sunan area of Pyongyang at 7:10 a.m.

The missile flew approximately 1,000 kilometers (621 miles), reaching a maximum altitude of 6,000 kilometers during its 70-minute flight before falling into the sea approximately 250 kilometers east of the northern Japanese island of Oshima, according to South Korean and Japanese defense officials.

The NSC issued a statement after the meeting condemning the latest missile launch as “a clear violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions and a grave provocation that escalates tensions on the Korean Peninsula and threatens regional peace.”

Yoon attended the NSC meeting right before he headed to Tokyo for a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. They are expected to discuss security cooperation against the growing nuclear and missile threat from the North and other bilateral issues.

According to the presidential office, Yoon emphasized the need for strengthened security cooperation with the United States and Japan in his remarks at the meeting.

Yoon also ordered South Korea’s military to “thoroughly carry out the ongoing Freedom Shield joint exercise to maintain a firm South Korea-U.S. joint defense posture that can deter any threat from North Korea,” his office said in a statement.

The exercise began earlier this week and is scheduled to run until March 23.

In a February statement, Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, said “We keep our eye on the restless military moves by the U.S. forces and the South Korean puppet military and are always on standby to take appropriate, quick and overwhelming action at any time according to our judgment,” suggesting the North could use the ongoing joint exercise as a pretext to conduct more missile launches or other kinds of weapons testing.

The North fired what it called two medium-range ballistic missiles Tuesday, after it claimed to have launched two “strategic cruise missiles” from a submarine two days earlier.

While the North has previously launched missiles over Japan — most recently in October last year — the regime typically fires them on lofted trajectories so they avoid neighboring countries, and the majority of missiles fired by the regime in the past year have landed in the East Sea.

But in a statement earlier this month, Kim Yo-jong said “The Pacific Ocean does not belong to the dominion of the United States or Japan,” suggesting the North sees missile launches into international waters farther away as fair game.

In response to the North Korean missile launch on Thursday morning, JCS Chairman Gen. Kim Seung-kyum held talks with Gen. Paul LaCamera, the commander of the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command, and vowed the allies will further bolster their joint defense posture against “any North Korean threats and provocations,” according to the JCS.

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