North Korea fires cruise missiles to ratchet up pressure

Seoul: North Korea fired multiple cruise missiles into waters off its west coast, stepping up tensions after leader Kim Jong Un said he plans to boost the country's nuclear-strike capabilities.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said it detected multiple cruise missiles fired at about 7am Wednesday and was coordinating with its ally the US to monitor for further activities by North Korea. It did not provide more details on the launches.

North Korea this month fired an intermediate-range ballistic missile designed to hit US bases in Asia for its first such launch of 2024. Pyongyang also criticised joint naval drills among the US, South Korea and Japan held in international waters off the peninsula.

North Korea said the previous launch was of a "hypersonic" ballistic missile, indicating it deployed a reentry vehicle that could hold a warhead and maneuver at high speeds. The US, South Korea and Japan said they were analysing the launch.

Accelerating weapons development

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have increased in recent months as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un continues to accelerate his weapons development and issue provocative threats of nuclear conflict with the United States and its Asian allies. The US, South Korea and Japan in response have been expanding their combined military exercises, which Kim portrays as invasion rehearsals, and sharpening their deterrence strategies built around nuclear-capable US assets.

In the latest tit-for-tat, North Korea said last week that it conducted a test of a purported nuclear-capable underwater attack drone in response to a combined naval exercise by the United States, South Korea and Japan , as it blamed its rivals for tensions in the region.

A viable nuclear threat

Cruise missiles are among a broad range of weapons North Korea has been testing in recent years as it attempts to build a viable nuclear threat against the United States and its Asian allies.

Since 2021, the North has conducted several flight tests of what it describes as long-range cruise missiles, which it claims can cover ranges of up to 2,000 kilometers away and are nuclear-capable.

While North Korean cruise missile activities aren’t directly banned under UN sanctions, experts say those weapons potentially pose a serious threat to South Korea and Japan, as they are designed to fly like small airplanes and travel along landscape that would make them harder to detect by radar.

There are concerns that North Korea would dial up tensions in a US election year. Experts say the North would aim to increase its bargaining power as it plans for eventual negotiations with whoever wins the November presidential vote.

North Korea also has a long history of ramping up pressure on rival South Korea when it doesn’t get what it wants from Washington. At Pyongyang’s rubber-stamp parliament last week, Kim declared that North Korea is abandoning its long-standing goal of a peaceful unification with the South and ordered the rewriting of the North’s constitution to cement its war-divided rival as its most hostile foreign adversary. He accused South Korea of acting as “top-class stooges” of the Americans and repeated a threat that he would use his nukes to annihilate the South if provoked.

Analysts say North Korea could be aiming to diminish South Korea’s voice in the regional nuclear standoff and eventually force direct dealings with Washington as it looks to cement its nuclear status.