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Kim Jong-un launches an intercontinental missile prior to the South Korea-Japan Summit


After launching two underwater strategic missiles over the weekend, north korea On Thursday, it launched what appeared to be an intercontinental missile. A busy week was already expected on the Korean peninsula due to the joint “Freedom Shield” exercises between South Korea and the United States, which began on Monday and are the largest in recent years. But also, this Thursday, a summit took place in Tokyo between the President of South Korea, Yoon Sok Yul, and the Prime Minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida. Before leaving for the Japanese capital, the North Korean dictator sent Yoon farewell.

As reported by Yonhap, the Joint Chiefs of Staff detected the launch at 7:10 am (11:10 pm Spanish Peninsula time) from the Sunan region, where Pyongyang’s airport is located. For 69 minutes, drawing a parabola, the projectile traveled about a thousand kilometers to the east before falling into the sea south of Hokkaido, the northernmost island of the Japanese archipelago. Pending more data, the South Korean and US military suspect that it may be an intercontinental ballistic missile, such as the Hwasong-15 launched by the communist regime in Pyongyang already in February.

“We strongly condemn the series of ballistic missile launches by North Korea as a major provocative act that harms peace and stability not only on the Korean Peninsula, but also the international community, in clear violation of United Nations resolutions.” and the Joint Chiefs of Staff protested in a statement in Seoul.

“North Korea will pay the price for these reckless provocations,” South President Yun Sok-yul warned at a meeting of the National Security Council held before leaving for Japan. In his meeting this afternoon with the Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, the nuclear threat from Kim Jong Un will be very present, which both countries are taking advantage of to strengthen their relations after several years of calm during the previous term. President of South Korea. Moon Jae In. The ice with Pyongyang has not yet melted after the failed summits between Kim Jong-un and former US President Donald Trump, and tension has returned to Northeast Asia and not only fears more missile tests, but even a nuclear test.

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Meanwhile, Tokyo and Seoul are trying to agree on a joint security strategy, but first they must heal the wounds left since Japan’s occupation of the Korean Peninsula, which lasted from 1910 until its defeat in 1945 in World War II. One of the thorny issues will be the compensation of Koreans who have suffered forced labor in large Japanese companies, such as Mitsubishi or Nippon Steel, which a Seoul court ruled in 2018. Although the South Korean government announced less than two weeks ago the creation of a public corporation under the Ministry of Interior to compensate the victims with donations from national companies, but some refuse to do so due to the absence of Japanese companies that used this forced labor.

But President Yoon has “the determination to move forward in South Korea-Japan relations” because he sees the important thing as improving US and bilateral relations to meet Kim’s nuclear challenge. “The visit is significant because it indicates that the strained relations between South Korea and Japan, which have been tense until now, have entered the stage of sincere normalization,” National Security Adviser Kim Song Han congratulated on Tuesday. And how did Yonhap collect.

Since December 2011, Japan and South Korea have not held a bilateral summit, as the last visit of the former president, Moon Jae-in, was to the G20 summit held in Osaka in June 2019. Four years later, Tokyo and Seoul opened a new phase of cooperation to counter the threat of Kim Jong-un. , the atomic dictator.

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