North Korea fired at least one suspected ballistic missile Saturday, adding to its record number of launches this year as Kim Jong Un leads a major political meeting to set policy for 2023.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korea fired a suspected ballistic missile toward waters off its east coast. The missile has likely already fallen, Japan’s Coast Guard said. Further details were not immediately available.
This year, Kim’s regime has already test fired about 70 ballistic missiles, the most in his decade in power and in defiance of United Nations resolutions that prohibit the launches. He has stepped up provocations in recent months in a display of anger at joint military drills in the region by the U.S. and its allies, South Korea and Japan.
Kim has been presiding over a meeting of his ruling Workers’ Party to review economic and political efforts for this year and decide on policy plans for 2023. He has shown no interest in returning to nuclear disarmament talks that have been stalled for nearly three years, and has pledged to never give up his atomic arsenal.
The meeting is expected to finish this weekend and on Saturday the state’s official Korean Central News Agency said Kim has been analyzing “the recent subjective and objective situation facing our revolution and the condition and circumstances to be foreseen in the future.”
The North Korean leader has been modernizing his inventory of missiles over the past several years to make them easier to hide, quicker to deploy and more difficult to shoot down. This year, he has tested missiles designed to deliver nuclear weapons to South Korea and Japan, as well as firing off intercontinental ballistic missiles with ranges to hit the American mainland.
North Korea on Nov. 18 test-fired an ICBM with Kim’s daughter on hand for the launch, marking her first official appearance in state media. The move signaled that there’s another generation ready to take over the Cold War’s last continuous family dynasty and it will depend on nuclear weapons for its survival.
