On Saturday, North Korea defended its recent missile launches as a necessary response to what it saw as US military threats.
The secretive communist nation has launched six missiles in violation of sanctions in less than two weeks, with Thursday’s launch of two ballistic missiles marking the most recent.
A call to take cover was issued when the North fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan on Tuesday, which damaged communities below.
According to state-run news, North Korea’s civil aviation agency stated without naming which launch: “The missile test launch by the DPRK is a regular and planned self-defensive step for defending the country’s security and the regional peace from the US direct military threats that have endured for more than half a century.” news agency KCNA.
The government agency released the statement in response to the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Friday condemnation of North Korea’s recent missile launches and their designation as a threat to civil aviation while convening its annual assembly in Montreal.
North Korea, which goes by the moniker DPRK for North Korea’s official name, views this ICAO resolution as “a political provocation by the US and its vassal forces designed to infringe upon the sovereignty of the DPRK.”
Joint military exercises between Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington have recently increased. On Thursday, more maneuvers were conducted with a US Navy destroyer from the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier’s strike group.
The launches are a part of a record-breaking year for North Korea’s nuclear testing after its leader Kim Jong Un declared his country an “irreversible” atomic state, thus ruling out the chance of denuclearization negotiations.
According to analysts, Pyongyang has taken advantage of the impasse at the UN to carry out ever-more aggressive missile tests.
Long before China’s Party Congress on October 16, officials in Seoul and Washington have been issuing warnings that Pyongyang will also carry out another nuclear test.
