Russia on Wednesday called on all parties involved in the Korean conflict to calm down after North Korea fired more than two dozen missiles causing concern in South Korea.
“We believe that all parties to this conflict should avoid any step that could cause an increase in tension,” Kremlin (Presidency) spokesman Dmitri Peskov was quoted as saying by the Spanish news agency EFE.
Peskov said that “the situation on the peninsula is already tense enough” and insisted that everyone remain calm.
The statement comes after South Korea announced the launch of at least 23 missiles in the last few hours.
One of the missiles crossed the so-called “Northern Border Line,” the “de facto” maritime divide between the two countries, the South Korean military said.
The shot triggered a rare air alert on the South Korean island of Ulleungdo, some 120 kilometers east of the Korean peninsula, where residents were advised to take refuge in shelters, according to the French news agency AFP.
It is the “first time since the partition of the peninsula” after the 1953 Korean War that a North Korean missile has landed so close to South Korean territorial waters, the Seoul military said.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has called a meeting of the National Security Council to discuss the incident, which analysts say is one of the most aggressive and threatening in several years.
Yoon regarded the “North Korean provocation as a ‘de facto’ territorial invasion by a missile that crossed the Northern Border Line for the first time since the division” of the peninsula, the South Korean presidency said in a statement.
He also ordered “swift and severe measures so that North Korea pays a high price for its provocations,” the presidency added, without specifying.
South Korea has closed several air routes over the Sea of Japan and has advised airlines to take a detour to “ensure passenger safety” on trips to the United States and Japan.
The shooting came at a time when South Korea and the United States are conducting the largest joint air exercise in their history, dubbed “Storm Watch,” involving hundreds of warplanes.
Pyongyang described the exercises as aggressive and provocative, official North Korean media reported.
Marshal Pak Jong Chon, secretary of the North Korean Workers’ Party, warned Seoul and Washington that they “will pay the most horrible price in history” if they attack the North Korean military.
North Korea is one of the few countries that supports Russia in the Ukraine war, which Moscow unleashed by invading the neighboring country on February 24 this year.
The two Koreas have been separated since the 1950-53 war.
The two countries are technically still at war, as the conflict ended with the signing of an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
Source: TSF
