North Korea on Wednesday fired multiple cruise missiles into the sea in its fifth test of such weapons since January, South Korea\u2019s military said, extending a streak in weapons demonstrations that are elevating tensions in the region. South Korea\u2019s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the South Korean and US militaries were analysing the launches from an area on North Korea\u2019s northeastern coast. The South Korean military didn\u2019t immediately provide the exact numbers of missiles fired or how war they flew.<\/p>\n
Experts say North Korea is ramping up pressure on its rivals in an election year in South Korea and the US, with a long-term focus on forcing Washington to accept the idea of the North as a nuclear power and extract security and economic concessions from a position of strength.<\/p>\n
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has also been issuing belligerent statements toward South Korea, including a declaration that he would abandon the North\u2019s long-term objective of reconciliation with its war-divided rival and threatening to annihilate the South with nukes if provoked.<\/p>\n
Cruise missiles, which are designed to be highly manoeuvrable in flight like small airplanes, are among a growing number of weapons North Korea is developing to overwhelm missile defences, supplementing the country\u2019s vast number of ballistic missiles designed to be fired from land and sea.<\/p>\n
The latest launches were North Korea\u2019s sixth missile-launch event this year, including a January 14 test of the country\u2019s first solid-fuel intermediate range missile, which demonstrated its efforts to advance its weaponry targeting remote US targets in the Pacific, including the military hub of Guam.<\/p>\n
The North earlier this year tested new cruise missiles designed to be fired from submarines and also long-range cruise missiles with potential range of reaching US military bases in Japan. The US, South Korea and Japan have been strengthening their combined military exercises and sharpening their nuclear deterrence strategies to cope with the North\u2019s evolving threats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
North Korea on Wednesday fired multiple cruise missiles into the sea in its fifth test of such weapons since January,\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":30992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[4033,4711,4976,149,3148,219,1523,150,2128,95],"class_list":["post-30991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-ballistic-missiles","tag-cruise-missiles","tag-election-year","tag-japan","tag-missile-tests","tag-north-korea","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-south-korea","tag-tensions","tag-usa"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}