Kim Jong-un’s regime apparently wants to revive its missile program, which puts a question mark on the effectiveness of the two summits between Donald Trump and the supremo of North Korea. The launch was from the east-coast town of Wonsan, directed towards the East Sea and covered a distance of nearly 125 miles. A South Korean news agency disclosed this. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said – “Our military has been closely watching North Korea's movements and has maintained a full-fledged posture in close coordination with the U.S." Officials of South Korea were interacting with officials of the U.S.

and were sharing relevant information.

Fox News reports that while the Pentagon did not confirm the information, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders confirmed it and added that it was aware of the actions and is monitoring the situation. Last month, the hermit kingdom had test-fired some sort of weapon which turned out to be a guided weapon for ground combat.

The situation should not spiral out of control

Tension was building up in the Korean peninsula until 2017 with threats on a nuclear war looming on the horizon. Suddenly, Kim Jong-un made overtures of peace with his southern neighbor Moon Jae-in.

All through 2018, there were extensions of the peace initiative with the first ever summit between Donald Trump and Kim in Singapore in June that held promises. However, the second summit in Hanoi in February this year was a failure because Kim’s demand of relief from sanctions clashed with Trump’s demand of denuclearization.

Fox News says the latest flurry of activities of North Korea launching missiles could lead to escalation of tensions between Washington and Pyongyang. Media reports estimate that North Korea has 30 to 60 nuclear warheads, and could be in possession of an ICBM that could strike the U.S.

In 2017, it had fired an ICBM into Japanese waters and launched a missile that flew over Japan. Incidentally, with regard to the latest missile launch of Pyongyang, Japan's Defense Ministry has clarified that they did not pose any security threat because they fell far short of the country's coast.

North Korea could be fine-tuning its arsenal

According to Sky News, the military of South Korea confirmed that North Korea did fire multiple unidentified short-range missiles from its eastern coast. The South has intensified its surveillance and is analyzing details with the U.S. authorities. In case the missile falls in the category of a banned ballistic missile, the interpretation could be a renewal of North’s ICBM activities that was on hold since November 2017.

In the opinion of analysts, the North could be having in its inventory some arsenal that needs fine-tuning. North’s activities are developments subsequent to failure of second Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi in February and meeting between Kim Jong-un and Russian president Vladimir Putin in April.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED