Ansamed – May 30 – North Korea fired a barrage of short-range ballistic missiles on Thursday morning, Seoul's armed forces said, just hours after Pyongyang sent hundreds of garbage-filled balloons across the border to punish South Korea. .


South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said it detected the launch of “what are suspected to be approximately 10 short-range ballistic missiles” fired into waters east of the Korean peninsula. The Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missiles flew a distance of about 350 kilometers, adding that it was analyzing the details in cooperation with the United States and Japan. He added that the launch constitutes a “provocation that seriously threatens peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.”


The Japanese Coast Guard and the Prime Minister's Office also confirmed the missile launch and said they were verifying more information. Yesterday, Pyongyang sent balloons filled with garbage, toilet paper and suspected animal feces to the South, while the South Korean military criticized Pyongyang for its “low-level” behavior. North Korea warned over the weekend that it would flood border areas with “piles of waste paper and dirt” to punish Seoul. Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, mocked the “liberal democracy goblins” in Seoul for her complaints about the balloons, and promised more balloons.


The ballistic missile launch also comes days after North Korea's latest attempt to put a spy satellite into orbit ended with a mid-air explosion late Monday. North Korea said in this regard that the missile carrying its reconnaissance satellite, “Malejeong-1-1,” exploded a few minutes after its launch due to a suspected engine problem. Japanese broadcaster NHK broadcast footage of what appeared to be a flaming projectile in the night sky, then exploding in the form of a fireball, saying it photographed it from northeastern China at the same time as the launch attempt. Putting a reconnaissance satellite into orbit has long been a top priority for the Kim regime, which said it succeeded in November after two failed attempts last year.


In a speech published by the Korean Central News Agency yesterday, Kim said that the country was not discouraged by the failure of the recent satellite launch. He said: “Although we failed to achieve the results that we had hoped to achieve through the launch of the last reconnaissance satellite, we should never feel afraid or frustrated, but rather we should make greater efforts.” “It is natural that after experiencing failure, you learn more and make more progress,” he said, according to the text of the speech he delivered at the Academy of Defense Sciences.


(ANSA-Agence France-Presse).

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