A North Korean launch activates the anti-missile alert of South Korea and Japan

by time news

2023-05-31 00:08:45

North Korea launched today a satellite aboard a space rocketas reported by the South Korean army, forcing activate alerts in Seoul and the Japanese prefecture of Okinawawhere the projectile would have flown over, urging the possible citizen evacuation.

“Launched what North Korea claims is a space rocket in a north-south direction,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) warned in a brief statement at around 6:32 p.m. local time on Wednesday (21:32 GMT on Tuesday) at the time that the metropolitan government of seoul activated an alert that was sent to phones and broadcast over the public address system in the streets urging citizens to “prepare for evacuation.”

A few minutes later, at 6:39 a.m. local time, the prefectural authorities japanese of Okinawa (southwest of the country) also issued a message via mobile phone and public address system indicating that a projectile “had apparently been launched from North Korea” in the direction of that region, and recommended “evacuating inside a building or in underground facilities”. The Japanese authorities withdrew the alert within twenty minutes considering that there was no risk of an impact on national territory, while the Seoul metropolitan government also subsequently indicated that it was lifting the alert.

The JCS said shortly after that the projectile was launched from “Dongchang-ri area, North Pyongan province (northeast of the country)”, where the Sohae space launch base is located, at around 0629 today and that it has flown over the Yellow Sea (called the West Sea in both Koreas) without incident.

Pyongyang had confirmed the day before that it would launch in the coming days from Sohae a space rocket loaded with a military reconnaissance satellite. Putting a military reconnaissance satellite into orbit is one of the weapons modernization objectives that the regime proposed at its 2021 congress and that it considers essential to monitor the movements of US and South Korean troops.

Seoul and Tokyo, which have called emergency meetings, have denounced that the launch – as would have happened with previous launches of North Korean satellites – it would actually be a covert test to test ballistic missile technologysomething that is punished by the UN sanctions that weigh on Pyongyang.

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