North Korea, Past Master At Provocation
"North Korea's provocation today was an effective act of territorial encroachment by a missile intruding the NLL for the first time since [the two Koreas'] division.""[There will be a] swift and firm response.""[Such] "military rashness and provocation can be no longer tolerated."South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol's office"We heard the siren at around 8:55 a.m. and all of us in the building went down to the evacuation place in the basement.""We stayed there until we came upstairs at around 9:15 after hearing that the projectile fell into the high seas."Ulleung county official
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| People watch a television screen showing a news broadcast with live footage of the South Korean island of Ulleungdo, at a railway station in Seoul, on Wednesday. (Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images) |
Residents of a South Korean island evacuated to underground shelters as sirens blared on Wednesday when North Korea fired over twenty missiles, at least one in their direction, landing near the sea border between North and South Korea. The response by the South was swift, seeing it launch its own missiles in the same border area, hours after North Korea made threats of its intention to use nuclear weapons to deliver to the United States and South Korea a promise they would "pay the most horrible price in history".
The North's idea of a subtle hint that it is displeased with the two nations' ongoing military drills it considers a rehearsal for an invasion by both the South and he U.S., of North Korea. The barrage of missile tests arrived at the very time South Korea was in mourning after a Halloween tragedy that took place on the weekend where over 150 people were killed, mostly by asphyxiation, in a surging crowd event in Seoul.
The South Korean military counted at least 23 missiles launched by the North -- 17 on Wednesday morning, and an additional six that same afternoon, off the South's eastern and western coasts. The weapons were identified as short range ballistic missiles -- alternately, surface-to-air missiles. Roughly a hundred artillery shells were fired on Wednesday as well by North Korea into an eastern maritime buffer zone set up in 2018 to reduce tensions.
One ballistic missile flew toward South Korea's Ulleung Island before finally landing 157 kilometres northwest of the island. According to the South's Joint chiefs of Staff, an air raid alert was issued on the island leading residents of the island to move for safety to underground shelters. The air raid alert was lifted hours later, while the transport ministry closed air routes above the country's east for the day.
One missile landed in international waters off the east coast of South Korea, the first time a North Korean missile landed close to the sea border since the North and South split in 1948, "This is very unprecedented and we will never tolerate it!", the Joint Chiefs of Staff stated. The use of ballistic missile launches or tests are banned by a number of UN Security Council resolutions.
South Korean fighter jets later that same day launched three air-to-surface, precision-guided missiles close to the eastern sea border as an indication of its determination to be tough on North Korean provocations. The missiles landed in international waters in the same direction at a distance of 26 kilometres north of the sea border as did the North Korean missile earlier on Wednesday.
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| North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un oversees a missile launch at an undisclosed location in North Korea, in this undated photo released on Oct. 10 by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). (Korean Central News Agency/Reuters) |
Labels: Missile Launches, North Korea, Provocations, South Korea
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, November 05, 2022
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