North and South Korea fired missiles off each other’s coasts for the first time on Wednesday in a dramatic escalation of tensions on the peninsula.
The dangerous tit-for-tat began with North Korea firing what Seoul said were more than ten missiles off its eastern and western coasts.
One ballistic missile landed less than 60 kilometres off South Korea’s coast, the first time an apparent test had landed near the its waters.
It landed outside of South Korea’s territorial waters, but south of the Northern Limit Line (NLL), a disputed inter-Korean maritime border in what South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol called an “effective act of territorial encroachment.”
In response, South Korean warplanes fired three air-to-ground missiles into the sea north across the NLL, the South’s military said. An official said the weapons used included an AGM-84H/K SLAM-ER, which is a US-made “stand-off” precision attack weapon that can fly for up to 270 kilometres (170 miles) with a 360 kg (800-pound) warhead.
The South’s launches came after Mr Yoon’s office vowed a “swift and firm response” so North Korea “pays the price for provocation”.
According to South Korea, one of the missiles fired by the North landed in international waters 16 miles south of the Koreas’ eastern sea border and 104 miles north-west of South Korea’s Ulleung island, where air raid warnings were issued.
“We heard the siren at around 8.55am and all of us in the building went down to the evacuation place in the basement,” an Ulleung county official told Reuters. “We stayed there until we came upstairs at around 9.15am after hearing that the projectile fell into the high seas.”
The launches came just hours after Pyongyang demanded that the United States and South Korea stop large-scale military exercises, saying such “military rashness and provocation can be no longer tolerated.”
In Washington, a State Department spokesman responded to North Korea’s warnings saying that Pyongyang appeared to be “reaching for another pretext for provocations it has already undertaken, potentially for provocations that it might be planning to take in the coming days or coming weeks.”
He said that the drills were “purely defensive in nature” and that the United States had made clear to North Korea that it harboured no hostile intent towards the country.
The spokesmasn added that the US and its allies had also made clear that there would be “profound costs and profound consequences” if North Korea resumed nuclear testing, which would be a “dangerous, destabilising step”. He did not elaborate on the consequences.
In a phone call with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, South Korea’s Foreign Minister Park Jin called the North Korean missile launch “unprecedented” and a “grave act of military provocation”.
