North Korea on Saturday defended its recent series of missile tests, presenting them as a legitimate defense against what it calls US military threats.
The communist country fired six shots in less than two weeks, the last being two ballistic missiles on Thursday. On Tuesday, North Korea launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) over Japan, forcing some of the archipelago’s inhabitants to seek shelter.
“The DPRK’s (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) missile test launch is a regular and planned self-defense measure to defend the country’s security and regional peace against direct US military threats lasting more than half a century,” said the North Korean Civil Aviation Agency without specifying what launch it was, according to the official KCNA agency.
“A political provocation by the United States”
State media issued the statement after the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which holds its annual meeting in Montreal, on Friday condemned ballistic tests carried out by Pyongyang in recent months as dangerous to civil aviation.
The lonely country considers this resolution adopted by the ICAO as “a political provocation by the United States and its vassal forces aimed at undermining the sovereignty of the DPRK.”
For their part, Seoul, Tokyo and Washington have intensified their joint military exercises in recent weeks, and this Thursday they staged new maneuvers with a US Navy destroyer belonging to the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier strike group.
Multiplication of weapons tests.
The launches come amid a record year of weapons tests by North Korea, which leader Kim Jong Un says is an “irreversible” nuclear power, ending talks on denuclearization.
Analysts say Pyongyang has taken advantage of the deadlock at the United Nations to carry out increasingly provocative weapons tests.
Furthermore, Seoul and Washington have been warning for months that Pyongyang will conduct another nuclear test, likely after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress on October 16.
Source: BFM TV
