April 26, 2024

North Korea launches 7th round of projectiles this month, South says | CBC News

South Korea’s military said North Korea has fired at least one unidentified projectile into the sea — its seventh round of weapons launches this month — in an apparent attempt to pressure the Biden administration over long-stalled nuclear negotiations.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff on Sunday didn’t immediately say whether the weapon was ballistic or how far it flew.

The launch came three days after North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea on Thursday. The North also flight-tested a pair of purported long-range cruise missiles on Tuesday while vowing to strengthen its nuclear “war deterrent” and build more powerful weapons.

North Korea has been ramping up its testing activity in recent months, including seven rounds of weapons launches so far in 2022, demonstrating its military might amid pandemic-related difficulties and a prolonged freeze in nuclear diplomacy with the United States.

While aggressively expanding his military capabilities despite limited resources, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is also reviving Pyongyang’s old playbook of brinkmanship to wrest concessions from Washington, which leads international sanctions over the North’s nuclear program.

This composite photo provided by Pyongyang purportedly shows missile tests launched from an undisclosed coastal area in North Korea on Thursday. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service/The Associated Press)

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