Security Council held an informal meeting Friday at which the U.S., its allies and human rights experts shone a spotlight on what they described as the dire rights situation in North Korea. Security Council scheduled an emergency open meeting Monday morning at the request of the United States, United Kingdom, Albania, Ecuador, France and Malta in response to North Korea’s ICBM launch March 16. Many experts say North Korea uses its rivals’ drills as a pretext to aggressively expand its nuclear arsenal and overall military capability. North Korea has long portrayed U.S.-South Korean military drills as rehearsals for an invasion, although the allies describe those exercises as defensive. South Korea quickly responded by launching its own missiles in the same border area off the Korean Peninsula’s eastern coast. One of the missiles the North fired in November flew in the direction of South Korea’s populated Ulleung island, triggering air raid sirens and forcing residents to evacuate. The North last year had also dialed up its weapons demonstrations when the allies were conducting joint exercises, including a slew of missile and artillery firings it described as simulated nuclear attacks on South Korean and U.S. North Korea already is coming off a record year in testing activity, with more than 70 missiles fired in 2022, as Kim accelerates a nuclear push aimed at forcing the United States to accept the idea of the North as a nuclear power and negotiating badly needed sanctions relief from a position of strength.
allies in the face of North Korean nuclear threats.
The latest ICBM test last Thursday came hours before South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol traveled to Tokyo for a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, which was partially aimed at rebuilding security ties between the often-estranged U.S. The North’s flurry of tests this year included a slew of short-range missiles fired from land vehicles, cruise missiles launched from a submarine and two different flight tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles fired from its main airport near the capital, Pyongyang, as it tries to demonstrate a dual ability to conduct nuclear attacks on South Korea and the U.S.
The drills, which are to continue through Thursday, include computer simulations and field exercises tjat are the biggest of their kind since 2018. and South Korean militaries began joint exercises on March 13. Sunday’s short-range launch was the North’s fifth missile event this month and the third since the U.S.
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