Face of Nation : SEOUL: North Koreaconducted the latest in a series of missile launches Saturday to protest US-South Korean war games, just hours after US President Donald Trump expressed his own frustration with the exercises.
Defence officials in Seoul said what appeared to be two short-range ballistic missiles were fired at daybreak from near the northeastern city of Hamhung, flying 400 kilometres (250 miles) before splashing down in the sea between the Korean peninsula and Japan.
It was the fifth round of launches in two weeks, with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un labelling them a “solemn warning” over the joint military drills that began just days ago.Saturday’s tests came shortly after Trump said he agreed with Kim’s opposition to the war games — albeit for financial rather than military reasons. Trump has repeatedly talked up his close personal relationship with Kim, as his administration seeks to resume stalled denuclearize talks with the North.Hours later, the White House had no immediate comment on the newest rocket tests.
Trump has appeared determined to secure a denuclearize agreement with North Korea ahead of next year’s presidential elections, despite faltering talks since he first met Kim in a historic ice-breaking summit in Singapore in June 2018.
Trump claimed Kim had agreed to give up his arsenal of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles. But Pyongyang has maintained that the United States must lift its economic embargo and sanctions on the country for talks to progress.
Yet even after their abortive second summit in February, Trump has been reluctant to criticise the North Korean leader. In June he offered an olive branch by meeting Kim in the Panmunjon truce village in the Korean Demilitarised Zone, becoming the first sitting US president ever to step inside the North.
On Friday, he said the missile launches weren’t important.
“I’ll say it again. There have been no nuclear tests. The missile tests have all been short-range. No ballistic missile tests, no long-range missiles,” Trump said. “Breaking the alliance is exactly what Pyongyang wants, which is why it makes all this noise,” Easley said. Others in the Trump administration have voiced their opposition to the launches.
After Pyongyang’s fourth launch early this week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeosaid Washington was ready to resume talks, but that the target of the “full, final denuclearisation of North Korea” had not changed. A senior State Department official who refused to be named told journalists last week that the missile tests were an impediment to peace.”The missile launches, any kind of provocations, are not helpful to advancing the cause of diplomacy,” the official said.
