SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea mentioned that Thursday’s launch was its largest Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), fired throughout a drill to show a “tough response posture” to ongoing US-South Korea navy drills, state media reported.
Photos of the launch launched on Friday by the nation’s authorities media confirmed Kim Jong Un watching the launch along with his daughter, and included images from area apparently shot by a digicam mounted on the missile.
North Korea fired the ICBM into the ocean between the Korean peninsula and Japan on Thursday, hours earlier than South Korea’s president flew to Tokyo for a summit that mentioned methods to counter the nuclear-armed North.
“The launching drill of the strategic weapon serves as an occasion to give a stronger warning to the enemies intentionally escalating the tension in the Korean peninsula while persistently resorting to irresponsible and reckless military threats,” state news company KCNA mentioned.
South Korean and American forces started 11 days of joint drills, dubbed “Freedom Shield 23,” on Monday, held on a scale not seen since 2017 to counter the North’s rising threats.
Kim accused the United States and South Korea of accelerating tensions with the navy drills.
He “stressed the need to strike fear into the enemies, really deter war and reliably guarantee the peaceful life of our people and their struggle for socialist construction by irreversibly bolstering up the nuclear war deterrent,” KCNA reported. — Reuters
Source: www.gmanetwork.com
