North Korean ballistic missile shots missing not far from South Korean and Japanese waters, belligerent statements from one side and the other, and international anger against Pyongyang. At first glance, the tension that has shaken the Far East in recent days seems almost routine. Indeed, the endless attempts of the North Korean dictatorship have ended up accustoming world opinion to a form of indifference to these ephemeral fevers.
This, however, is of a completely different kind. Because while the aggressiveness of the communist regime of Kim Jong-un increases, the anger of its neighbors and of the Americans grows. Worse yet, the global geopolitical situation, in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war, further aggravates this already deleterious climate. BFMTV.com takes stock of this unique crisis this Thursday.
The threat has never been closer in 70 years
23 shots. This is the number of ballistic missile launches North Korea has made into the waves bordering South Korea, and even then it is a minimum estimate. Above all, the threat is getting closer.
In fact, one of these shots, skimming the South Korean island of Ulleungdo, triggered an airstrike alert there. The South Korean president made his anger very clear in a statement.
“North Korea’s provocation is a de facto territorial invasion,” he said.
The head of state said it was “the first time” that a missile had crossed “the northern limit line of the division.”
The division is recorded since 1953 and the conclusion of an agreement that officially suspends hostilities between the North (communist) and the South (pro-American), opened by the invasion of the second by the first. Since then, the two sides of the peninsula have looked at each other like mud dogs on each side of the 38th parallel, a border that also divides their respective maritime zones. Border that, therefore, North Korea is accused of having crossed this Wednesday.
Without confirming this transgression, the South Korean military has also referred to this 70-year-old conflict, stating that the missile that hit Ulleungdo Island was the closest hit to national territorial waters since 1953.
running shots
Beyond this proximity, the emotion it conveys holds attention. “North Korea tested almost as many ballistic missiles in one day as during the entire reign of Kim Jong-il between 1994 and 2011,” observed Antoine Bondaz, a Korea researcher at the Strategic Research Foundation, with the Parisian after Wednesday.
According to the daily count, for the year 2022 alone, North Korea fired 44 missiles, far more than in previous years. A total to which must be added, according to the Agence France Presse, a hundred artillery shots around the maritime divide.
Obviously, such fireworks could not go unanswered. In addition, Seoul responded by firing three surface-to-air missiles in the same area.
“Storm watcher” in troubled waters
This exchange of bursts is especially sensitive as it occurs in the midst of joint maneuvers by South Korean and US aviation. These are currently engaged in operation “vigilant stormin which hundreds of aircraft participate for each of the two states.
It is simply the most important joint effort in the history of the two nations. A “watchful storm” that North Korea considers a “provocation” that justifies the conduct of its own actions.
Japan at the forefront
And the matter is not reduced to a duel with foils – less and less speckled – between the Koreas, with more and more interested parties.
Japan is thus at the forefront of this latent conflict. On the night of Wednesday to Thursday around midnight in France, North Korea fired three ballistic missiles – including an intercontinental missile – towards the Sea of Japan and the Japanese archipelago. This prompted Japanese television to broadcast warning messages, while the state briefly suspended train traffic.
It must be said that if these shells were damaged in the Sea of Japan, the empire believed for a time in an overflight of its territory. If that wasn’t the case this time, a North Korean missile hovered over Japanese soil on October 4, for the first time in five years.
An echo of the war in Ukraine
From Japan, whose Prime Minister Fulio Kishida spoke of an “intolerable outrage”, to Emmanuel Macron’s France, which on Wednesday lambasted “the new unacceptable provocations” by Pyongyang, the condemnation of South Korea is general.
And the latest US comments are unlikely to calm international anxieties. John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, accused North Korea on Wednesday of “providing covert aid to Russia’s war against Ukraine.” In this case, Washington claims that North Korea delivered many missiles to Moscow while trying to make believe imports from Africa and the Middle East.
Towards a new nuclear test?
One would think that the escalation has peaked, except for the outbreak of open conflict. However, one level remains: the United States, South Korea but also the International Atomic Energy Agency fear aloud that Kim Jong-un and his family will undertake a new nuclear test, picking up a thread interrupted in 2017.
It would be the seventh experience of this nature for the totalitarian state. Which further expands its power of annoyance, and increases the environmental nervousness.
Source: BFM TV
