North Korea fires missiles, stays mum on US soldier who crossed border
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North Korea fired several cruise missiles toward its western sea Saturday, South Korea’s military said.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the launches were detected beginning around 4 a.m. but did not immediately report how many missiles were fired or how far they flew. It said the United States and South Korean militaries were closely analyzing the launches.
The flight distance of those missiles roughly matched the distance between Pyongyang and the South Korean port city of Busan, where the USS Kentucky on Tuesday made the first visit by a U.S. nuclear-armed submarine to South Korea since the 1980s.
Also Tuesday, American soldier Pvt. Travis King sprinted across the border into North Korea while on a tour of an inter-Korean truce village.
North Korea’s state media has yet to comment on King and the country has not responded to U.S. requests to clarify where he is being kept and what his condition is. U.S. officials have expressed concern about King’s well-being, considering North Korea’s previous rough treatment of some American detainees. It could be weeks, or even months, before North Korea releases meaningful information about King, analysts say, as the country could drag out his detention to maximize leverage and add urgency to U.S. efforts to secure his release.
“With so many moving pieces, it’s important not to attribute causation to mere correlation of events. But North Korea’s missile provocations do not foreshadow an easy negotiation to secure Travis King’s release,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at South Korea’s Ewha University. “Unauthorized border crossings endanger personnel, risk a political and even military incident, and can be exploited by North Korean hostage diplomacy.”
The United States and South Korea have been expanding their combined military exercises and have agreed to increase the regional deployment of U.S. strategic assets like bombers, aircraft carriers and submarines in a show of force against North Korea, which has test-fired around 100 missiles since the start of 2022.
The allies also kicked off new rounds of nuclear contingency planning meetings that are partially aimed at easing fears among the South Korean public about the North’s growing nuclear threat and suppressing voices within the country that it should pursue its own deterrent.
North Korea’s defense minister issued a veiled threat Thursday suggesting the docking of the Kentucky in South Korea could be grounds for a nuclear attack by the North. North Korea has used such rhetoric before, but the comments underscored how much relations are strained now.
South Korea’s Defense Ministry on Friday described the deployment of the Kentucky and the nuclear contingency planning meetings between Washington and Seoul as “defensive response measures” to counter the North Korean threat. The ministry said in a statement it “strongly warns” that any nuclear attack by the North on the allies would face an “immediate, overwhelming and decisive response … that would bring an end to the North Korean regime.”
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