North Korea test fired two ballistic missiles early on Thursday, in the biggest challenge so far to Joe Biden’s attempts to engage the regime over its nuclear weapons program.
The projectiles were launched on North Korea’s east coast and are believed to have landed in the sea outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, officials in Tokyo said.
The tests come soon after Biden dismissed as “business as usual” the launch last weekend of two short-range missiles, and cast a shadow over the start of the Olympic torch relay in Japan.
“It’s been a year since they last launched a missile,” Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, told reporters. “This threatens the peace and security of our country and the region. It is also a violation of UN resolutions.”
South Korea’s military said the North fired two “unidentified projectiles” into the Sea of Japan, known as the East Sea in Korea, from South Hamgyong province. No further information on the device type was immediately available, but it added the military had “strengthened its monitoring posture in close coordination with the US”.
South Korea’s national security council voiced “deep concern” over the launches, the presidential Blue House said in a statement.
The US military’s Pacific Command said the launches highlighted the threat North Korea’s illicit weapons program posed to its neighbours and the international community, adding that it was monitoring the situation and consulting allies.
North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has used missile and nuclear tests both as a demonstration of the regime’s growing military might and to pressure Washington into negotiating on a more equal footing.
North Korea has not tested a nuclear weapon or an intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) since 2017, ahead of a historic meeting between Kim and Donald Trump in 2018.
While the Biden administration is reportedly in the “final stages” of reviewing its North Korea policy, analysts noted that US officials had emphasised the “denuclearisation of North Korea” – a subtle change in wording from the last administration.
Trump had agreed during his first summit with Kim that the goal should be to rid the entire peninsula of nuclear weapons. North Korea has interpreted that to mean that the US should withdraw its troops from South Korea and end its “nuclear umbrella” security alliance with Seoul.
Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said the North Korea policy review would come within the context of the administration’s strategy on China, North Korea’s only major ally and biggest trading partner.
“North Korea’s military activities after reaffirming ties with Beijing raise questions about how China is complicit in sanctions evasion and may be enabling the Kim regime’s threats to the region. This will increase calls in the US and elsewhere to sanction Chinese firms involved in illicit trade,” he said.
After initially encouraging meetings between Kim and Trump descended into a prolonged deadlock over denuclearisation, Pyongyang has been biding its time since Biden took office and didn’t officially acknowledge the new administration until last week.
“This latest North Korean missile launch is most likely a reaction to Biden’s downplaying and seeming to laugh off their weekend missile tests,” said Harry Kazianis, senior director of Korean studies at the Centre for the National Interest in Washington.
“The Kim regime, just like during the Trump years, will react to even the slightest of what they feel are any sort of loss of face or disparaging comments coming out of Washington. While Biden’s comments … were clearly not meant to trigger a reaction, the North Koreans will use any pretext that is offered to raise the ante.”
Biden’s diplomatic overtures to North Korea have gone unanswered, and Pyongyang said it would not engage until Washington dropped its hostile policies, including joint military drills with South Korea.
The North is banned from developing ballistic missiles under UN Security Council resolutions, and is under multiple international sanctions over its weapons programs. But it has made rapid progress in its capabilities under Kim, and is now believed to possess ICBMs capable of reaching every part of the US mainland.
Last weekend’s short-range missile launches followed joint exercises by the US and South Korean militaries and a visit to the region by US secretary of state Antony Blinken and defence secretary Lloyd Austin to discuss alliance and security issues.
During their trip to Seoul and Tokyo, Blinken repeatedly stressed the importance of denuclearising Pyongyang.
That prompted North Korean first vice foreign minister, Choe Son-hui, to accuse the US of peddling a “lunatic theory” of a ‘threat from North Korea’ and groundless rhetoric about ‘complete denuclearisation’.”
Trump’s relationship with Kim went from trading insults and threats of war to a diplomatic thaw and three encounters, but they made no substantive progress towards denuclearisation.
Trump held two summits with Kim, in Singapore and Vietnam, and the United States pulled back on some joint training activities with South Korea’s military while North Korea froze ICBM tests.
But their February 2019 meeting in Hanoi broke up over sanctions relief and what the North would be willing to give up in return.
Communications then dried up, despite a third encounter in the Demilitarised Zone, the heavily armed border that has divided the two Koreas since their 1950-53 war.