North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has overseen the test of new surface-to-sea missiles, according to state media, while ordering his military to strengthen its readiness in disputed waters north of the South Korean border island of Yeonpyeong.
The report on the launches by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Thursday came a day after South Korea’s military said North Korea had fired multiple cruise missiles in waters off its eastern port of Wonsan. The test was Pyongyang’s sixth missile launch event of the year.
The KCNA report said Kim supervised the “evaluation test-fire of new-type surface-to-sea missile Padasuri-6 to be equipped by the navy”, and expressed “great satisfaction over the results of the test-fire”.
The missiles hit their intended targets after flying over the East Sea for 1,400 seconds, it said. The East Sea is known as the Sea of Japan internationally.
Kim also accused South Korea of frequently violating his country’s sovereignty by insisting on a “Northern Limit Line” (NLL), the maritime demarcation line between the two Koreas, and conducting maritime patrols and inter-diction of third-party ships, according to the KCNA. The North Korean leader also gave orders to his military to strengthen its readiness in the waters north of Yeonpyeong Island and to the west of the Korean peninsula, in the region of the NLL.
Waters near the NLL, which was drawn up by the United States-led United Nations Command at the end of the Korean War in 1953, have been the site of previous clashes between the two Koreas. In 2010, North Korea torpedoed a South Korean warship in the Yellow Sea, killing 46 Sailors, and fired a barrage of artillery shells at Yeonpyeong Island, killing four others.
According to the KCNA, Kim referred to the de facto border as a “ghost one without any ground in the light of international law”.
