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Wednesday’s report comes just two days after North Korea launches ‘suicide drone’a type of drone designed to deliberately crash into enemy targets, effectively acting as a guided missile.
North Korea said in February it had developed a new control system for multiple rocket launchers that would bring about a “qualitative change” in its defense capabilities.
In May, North Korea said the upgraded rocket launchers “will be deployed to the Korean People’s Army units as replacement equipment between 2024 and 2026.”
Seeking firepower advantage
Hong Min, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said that North Korea’s old multiple rocket launchers were produced around the 1980s. Although they can strike South Korean front-line troops or the urban area of Seoul, their “explosive power and accuracy are limited.”
Using old-style weapons “will also make it difficult to ensure firepower superiority over U.S. and South Korean forces,” Hong said.
He told AFP that to counter Seoul and Washington, which have overwhelming air superiority, Pyongyang is seeking to improve the “larger, longer-range and guidance capabilities” of its rocket launchers to “rapidly destroy” South Korean airfields.
Relations between the two Koreas are at their lowest point in years, with Pyongyang declaring South Korea its “main enemy”.
It has closed institutions dedicated to reunification and threatened war over “even 0.001 millimetre” of territorial aggression.
The test came as South Korea and the United States held their annual “Ulchi Freedom Shield” joint military exercises, which are set to continue until Thursday, in a new exercise aimed at curbing nuclear-armed North Korea.
North Korea, which attacked its neighbor in 1950, sparking the Korean War, has been angry about joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises, denouncing them as a rehearsal for invasion.
“While maintaining a solid joint defense posture, our military will conduct the UFS exercise and joint field training exercise as planned,” officials from Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
They added that the military was “closely monitoring for signs of provocation and military activity by North Korea”.
The statement added: “If North Korea takes provocative actions, we will resolutely respond in accordance with the principle of ‘immediate, strong and final’ action.”
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