First Published Oct 6, 2022, 12:23 PM IST
sole: The failure of the ballistic missile test caused panic in the city of Gangneung, South Korea. The panic was caused when the missile failed to fire and fell to the ground, causing a huge fire.
Allies South Korea and the US held multiple joint drills, including bombing runs and missile launches, in response to North Korea’s ballistic missile launch at Japan on Tuesday. Missile testing was a part of this.
South Korea’s military launched the Hyunmoo-2 short-range ballistic missile late Tuesday, but it malfunctioned and crashed shortly after launch. A South Korean military official told Yonhap news agency that the missile’s propellant caught fire but its warhead did not explode.
A video of this is going viral on social media. But the news agency AP says that the authenticity of this has not been confirmed. Locals say they saw orange flames like a large fireball near an air force base near Gangneung on the country’s east coast.
Many panicked Gangneung residents were calling the city’s emergency services, an official told AFP. A municipal official told the news agency on condition of anonymity that at first we did not know what was going on as we did not receive any notification from the army about such training.
1950-53 Korean War South and North Korea are technically at war rather than a peace treaty. But armed conflicts between the two neighbors are rare. But many townspeople thought the fire caused by a missile malfunction was a military attack.
“I thought there was a war, but it was a military exercise,” said a user from Gangneung on Twitter. Another user tweeted, “What took the army so long to confirm all this? If there is a war, this should be known the next day.”
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said no casualties were reported and the cause of the crash was under investigation.
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Last Updated Oct 6, 2022, 12:23 PM IST