SEOUL: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un guided recent exercises by nuclear tactical operation units in response to large-scale navy drills by South Korean and US forces, which have escalated regional tensions, KCNA state news agency said on Monday (Oct 10).

Over the past two weeks, North Korea carried out exercises involving ballistic missiles with mock nuclear warheads, KCNA reported, saying it was to deliver a strong message of war deterrence. They were conducted to target enemy airfields and key ports, it added.

“The effectiveness and practical combat capability of our nuclear combat force were fully demonstrated as it stands completely ready to hit and destroy targets at any time from any location,” KCNA said.

“Even though the enemy continues to talk about dialogue and negotiations, we do not have anything to talk about nor do we feel the need to do so,” KCNA quoted Kim as saying.

KCNA said North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party decided to conduct the drills as an unavoidable response to a large-scale mobilisation of US and South Korean naval forces, including an aircraft carrier and a nuclear-powered submarine.

“There will never be such a thing as our abandonment of the nuclear weapons or denuclearisation first, nor will there be any negotiations to this end or bargaining chip in these processes,” Kim said on Sep 8.

With US attention focused on the situation in Ukraine and its ongoing rivalry with China, North Korea has had ample time since the Trump administration to grow its weapons arsenal. In fact, Pyongyang sees itself as having the upper hand now, no longer fazed by international sanctions or threats from the United States.

“It is the enemy who feels hard-pressed now; we do not feel hard-pressed, and we are fully able to live by our own efforts and in our own way even in these circumstances,” Kim said in the same September speech to the Seventh Session of the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly.

This bold stance has been reflected over the past 10 days. Notably, North Korea’s recent missile tests were conducted in the midst of US-South Korea joint military drills and while a US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was in South Korea.

In the past, North Korea would simply send out statements criticising the joint drills but refrain from conducting actual missile tests during the exercises. This time, however, was different. The USS Ronald Reagan docked in Busan on Sep 23 and was welcomed two days later by a North Korean short-range ballistic missile launch.

While the US and South Korea may have wanted to display a powerful extended deterrence force by including the USS Ronald Reagan and the nuclear-powered submarine USS Annapolis in their exercises, North Korea was undaunted.

SEOUL: Hours after North Korea flew a ballistic missile over neighbouring Japan on Tuesday (Oct 4), residents in a South Korean seaside town were startled to see flames leaping from a nearby military base and missiles soaring into the sky.

It wasn’t the start of a war, but a South Korean display of military force that went wrong in a blaze of burning rocket fuel.

Intended as a demonstration to deter North Korea, South Korea said it was conducting a nighttime drill with Hyunmoo-2C short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) when one failed shortly after launch and hit the ground inside the base in Gangneung, on South Korea’s east coast.

The missile was carrying a warhead, but it was not armed and did not explode, and there were no casualties, a military official told a briefing. The official apologised for causing residents to worry.

The burning rocket fuel lit up the night sky, however, sparking calls to emergency responders and fuelling social media rumours that went unanswered for eight hours until the military disclosed the drill and explained the fire.

“All of a sudden I heard a roar and it made me think something has gone wrong,” said Kim Hee-soo, a nearby resident. “So I looked at the area where they’ve fired Hyunmoo missiles before and there was flame and smoke and it was a total mess.”

A video that Kim shared on social media went viral overnight, and other residents chimed in with concerns and fears amid silence from military authorities.

“I thought it was a war,” one said in a comment on the video.

Another said their house was shaken by the blast, and a third said they evacuated, thinking a landslide was headed for their home.

In densely populated South Korea, military training is often conducted near communities, sparking some protests.

The 24/7 disaster management office in Gangneung told Reuters that it had received several calls from worried residents.

An official with the agency said the military had confirmed it was conducting a drill, but did not explain the fire, and no city firefighters were called to the base.

Kim said he is used to missile launches from the base, including a joint US-South Korea daytime drill in June in response to other North Korean tests.

“I’ve never experienced such an accident in my years having been born and raised here,” said Kim, 43. “It makes me very nervous and I hope that they can let us know whenever they conduct a training.”

He told reporters, “North Korea’s series of actions, including repeated ballistic missile launches, poses a threat to the peace and security of Japan, the region and international society.”

Following a stop in Japan, Harris will land in the South Korean capital and visit the heavily fortified Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) between the neighbours on Thursday.

In a speech hours earlier aboard the destroyer USS Howard destroyer in the Japanese city of Yokosuka, Harris had called Sunday’s missile launch part of an “illicit weapons programme which threatens regional stability and violates multiple UN Security Council resolutions”.

North Korea has tested missiles at an unprecedented pace this year, while this week’s joint drill is a show of force intended to warn against what could be its first nuclear test since 2017.

Lockheed Martin’s Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, was designed to help protect South Korea against attacks from North Korea; instead it became the biggest obstacle to relations between Beijing and Seoul in decades when its deployment was announced in 2016.

Fearing the system could allow the US to monitor its capabilities, China declared THAAD a threat to the status quo. The system, which has no offensive strike capacity, led Beijing to declare an unofficial trade war on South Korea, hitting the likes of Lotte Group with business suspensions on spurious grounds, squeezing tourism revenue by suspending sales of package tours to South Korea, and even hurting the K-pop business.

It was an extraordinary moment of Chinese heavy-handedness, and should have been a warning to the US about how Beijing treats its neighbours.

The dovish Moon Jae-in, who came into office the following year, only encouraged future deployments of this strategy by acquiescing to Chinese demands with his “Three Nos” policy: No extra THAAD deployments, no participation in a US-led missile-defence network and no involvement in a three-way alliance with the US and Japan.

His successor Yoon Suk Yeol pledged to expand the THAAD system. There’s no immediate sign of that happening, but Yoon’s administration has rejected the Three Nos and said the matter is “not negotiable”.

Perhaps there’s less at stake now: A zero-COVID Beijing can’t exactly cut off tourists to South Korea this time. But the threat from North Korea hasn’t gone away, even if the rogue nation’s place in the headlines has diminished from the days of “fire and fury”; Pyongyang has already fired more ballistic missiles in 2022 than any other year.

The budget request is for funding to mass produce ground-launched cruise missiles – an extended range version of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries-designed Type 12 missile already in use – to strike ships, and new high-velocity glide ballistic missiles capable of hitting ground targets.

The ministry is also seeking money to develop other projectiles, including hypersonic warheads.

The ministry did not give a range for the proposed weapons, or say how many it planned to field, but they would likely be able to reach targets in China if deployed along Japan’s nearby southwest Okinawa island chain.

Japan has already ordered air-launched missiles, including the Joint Strike Missile (JSM) made by Norway’s Kongsberg and Lockheed Martin Corp’s Joint Air-to-Surface Stand-Off Missile (JASSM) with a range of up to 1,000 km.

Unlike with ship or ground-based launchers, however, the number it can fire is limited by how many planes it can put in the air to fire them.