North Korean missile launch seen as reaction to South Korea’s hypersonic test
by Andrew Salmon · The Washington TimesSEOUL, South Korea — North Korea test-fired multiple ballistic missiles Monday, just days after South Korea conducted the first successful test of its own hypersonic missile.
Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the launch site was in the Pyongyang area, with missiles taking an eastward flight path before splashing down in the Sea of Japan.
Japanese Vice Defense Minister Takashi Koyari told Tokyo media the missiles reached an altitude of 43 miles and flew more than 565 miles — typical altitude and range parameters for the class of subatmospheric, short-range battlefield missiles North Korea has widely sold to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine.
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“We are analyzing details, including whether it flew on an irregular trajectory,” said Mr. Koyari.
As regular ballistic missiles travel in a predictable arc, irregular trajectories indicate hypersonic missiles.
Hypersonics actively maneuver, taking unpredictable paths inside the atmosphere, rather than following a free-falling dive path. As a result, they are difficult to shoot down.
Pyongyang’s move came days after Seoul tested its own hypersonic weapon.
“Initial analysis suggests [the launch] was … a protest against the successful launch of our hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) and a display of the North’s achievements under its five-year plan to bolster defense capabilities and a deliberate show of its missile capabilities,” Seoul’s JCS told local media.
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President Lee Jae-myung oversaw Seoul’s first successful test launch of a domestically designed and manufactured HGV on Thursday.
The high profile of the event was widely analyzed as South Korea’s response to a Sept. 21 mine blast in the Demilitarized Zone that wounded three South Korean soldiers — two seriously.
After an investigation, Seoul’s JCS accused North Korea of laying mines just south of the Military Demarcation Line, the de facto inter-Korean border inside the 2.5-mile-wide DMZ, which crosses the waist of the peninsula.
The MDL was marked with a series of wooden stakes after the Korean War armistice took effect in 1953, but they have virtually all rotted away.
Today, the largely unmarked nature of the frontier, combined with overgrown and frequently rugged terrain, demands extremely precise navigation. The many minefields laid by both sides make patrolling by small infantry units highly hazardous.
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North Korea has denied laying the mines that caused the South Korean casualties.
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Andrew Salmon
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