Seoul, Sep 3 (EFE).- North Korea announced Sunday that its cruise missile launches a day earlier simulated a “tactical nuclear attack.”
People watch a news segment pertaining to North Korea’s recent missile launch, at a station in Seoul, South Korea, 02 September 2023. EFE-EPA/JEON HEON-KYUN
Pyongyang fired several cruise missiles around 4 am on Saturday, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).
“A firing drill for simulated tactical nuclear attack was conducted at dawn of September 2 to warn the enemies of the actual nuclear war danger,” North Korea’s state-run news agency KCNA reported Sunday.
The test was carried out with “two long-range strategic cruise missiles tipped with mock nuclear warheads,” it added.
The KCNA detailed that the “nuclear strike mission” was carried out successfully and that the missiles traveled a distance of 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) in about 7.6 seconds, detonating at a preset altitude of 150 meters above the target island.
North Korea also slammed the large-scale joint military drills conducted by the United States and South Korea until Thursday, saying that they “continuously escalate tensions and more openly reveal their military confrontation scheme” against Pyongyang.
“The nuclear force of the DPRK (North Korea’s official name) will bolster up its responsible combat counteraction posture in every way to deter war and preserve peace and stability,” the KCNA added.
South Korea and the United States on Thursday concluded their joint Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) exercises, which the North views as an invasion rehearsal and has warned could end up resulting in a “thermonuclear war.”
In response to the joint drills, North Korea announced on Thursday that it had conducted a military command post exercise that was supervised by the leader Kim Jong-un and simulated the seizure of South Korean territory.
A day earlier, Pyongyang launched two short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) into the Sea of Japan (called the East Sea in the two Koreas), hours after Washington mobilized a B-1 strategic bomber to take part in the UFS exercises.
Following the failure of the denuclearization dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang in 2019, the Korean peninsula has once again become the scene of a persistent military escalation, with the Kim Jong-un-led North Korean regime repeatedly testing missiles and the allies carrying out large-scale exercises and the US regularly deploying strategic assets. EFE
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