The South Korean government said on Wednesday it had recovered fragments from a North Korean missile launched a week ago, analysis of which showed a projectile similar to the Russian S-200 recently used in Ukraine.
The South Korean Navy found, this Sunday, a missile fragment three meters long and two meters wide in waters of the South Special Economic Zone (SEZ), in the Sea of Japan (known as the East Sea in both Koreas). .
The wreckage analyzed “showed that it was a North Korean SA-5 missile [designação da NATO para o S-200] in terms of appearance and characteristics,” the South Korean Defense Ministry said in a statement.
The S-200 or SA-5 is a long-range surface-to-air missile that “Russia has recently used as a surface-to-air missile in the Ukraine war,” the South Korean military said.
On Tuesday, North Korea’s Defense Ministry denied US accusations that Pyongyang is supplying artillery ammunition to Russia for the war in Ukraine.
Last week, White House Security Council spokesman John Kirby accused North Korea of shipping a “significant amount” of such munitions to Russia “covertly,” “trying to make it look like they were going to be shipped to the Middle East or Africa. .
On the 2nd of this month, Seoul detected the launch of what it identified as three short-range ballistic missiles from the east coast, one of which fell into the sea, just 57 kilometers east of the South Korean coastal city of Sokcho.
It was the first time since the partition of the peninsula that a North Korean missile crossed the North Border Line, which divides the waters of the two neighbors, to land in the waters of South Korea’s EEZ.
This missile was just one of 30 that North Korea fired between Wednesday and Saturday in response to major air maneuvers by South Korea and the United States.
Tension on the Korean peninsula is reaching unprecedented levels in the face of repeated North Korean weapons tests, allied maneuvers and the possibility that satellites indicate Kim Jong-un’s regime is poised to carry out the first nuclear test since 2017.
North Korea has always viewed military maneuvers by the United States and South Korea as rehearsals for an invasion or to topple the Kim Jong-un regime.
Technically, the two Koreas are still at war, as the 1950-53 conflict ended with the signing of an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
Source: TSF
