While North Korea fires cruise missiles, it stays mum on U.S. soldier who crossed into the country
CTV
North Korea fired several cruise missiles toward its western sea Saturday, South Korea's military said, marking the second launch event this week apparently in protest of the docking of a nuclear-armed U.S. submarine in South Korea.
North Korea fired several cruise missiles toward its western sea Saturday, South Korea's military said, marking the second launch event this week apparently in protest of the docking of a nuclear-armed U.S. submarine in South Korea.
While adding to its barrage of missile launches in recent months, North Korea remained publicly silent for a fifth day on the fate of an American soldier who bolted into the North across the heavily armed Korean border this week.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the launches were detected beginning around 4 a.m. but did not immediately report how many missiles were fired or how far they flew. It said the United States and South Korean militaries were closely analyzing the launches.
North Korea in recent years has been testing newly developed cruise missiles it describes as "strategic," implying an intent to arm them with nuclear weapons. Experts say the main mission of those weapons would include striking naval assets and ports. Designed to fly like small airplanes and travel along landscape that would make them harder to detect by radar, cruise missiles are among a growing collection of North Korean weapons aimed at overwhelming missile defences in the South.
On Wednesday, North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles from an area near its capital, Pyongyang. They flew about 550 kilometres before landing in waters east of the Korean Peninsula.
The flight distance of those missiles roughly matched the distance between Pyongyang and the South Korean port city of Busan, where the USS Kentucky on Tuesday made the first visit by a U.S. nuclear-armed submarine to South Korea since the 1980s.
Also Tuesday, American soldier Pvt. Travis King sprinted across the border into North Korea while on a tour of an inter-Korean truce village.
