Another day and another North Korean provocation:
North Korea fired several rounds of short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea on Monday, the South Korean military said, three days after it launched cruise missiles into the Yellow Sea.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said it detected what appeared to be several short-range ballistic missiles launched from the Pyongyang region at 3:01 p.m.
“The North Korean missiles flew about 300 kilometers and splashed into the sea,” the JCS said in a text message to reporters. It did not provide further details, citing an ongoing analysis.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
You can tell the Kim regime is trying to amp up the scary factor when they start calling things “super-large”:
North Korea conducted a “super-large warhead” power test for a strategic cruise missile and test-fired a new anti-aircraft missile this week, state media reported Saturday, further ratcheting up tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
The Missile Administration carried out the test of the warhead designed for the “Hwasal-1 Ra-3” strategic cruise missile, and test-launched its new anti-aircraft missile, the “Pyoljji-1-2,” in the Yellow Sea on Friday, KCNA said, noting that a “certain goal” was achieved through the test launch.
It is the first time that Pyongyang has named a missile “Pyoljji,” which means “meteor” in Korean.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
It appears to be more about domestic politics in Japan than actually making any breakthrough with North Korea:
Why is Kishida so interested in holding a summit with Kim? According to expert analysis, Kishida needs a diplomatic breakthrough to change the bleak trajectory of his premiership, which has been plagued by domestic scandals. The approval rating of his Cabinet dipped to a dismal 20.1 percent in February 2024, right when public discussion of a Kim-Kishida summit ramped up. North Korea seems to agree with this analysis; Kim Yo Jong’s March statement claimed that Kishida was not serious about improving Japan-North Korea ties but only seeking a summit in a “bid for popularity.”
Another potential motivation for Kishida is that inter-Korean relations are facing serious challenges during South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s term, and North Korea-U.S. relations are relatively deadlocked. Meanwhile, the threat from a series of North Korean ballistic missile tests, particularly the April 2 test of an intermediate-range ballistic missile equipped with a hypersonic warhead, has pressured the United States and its allies.
Japan, as one of the United States’ traditional allies, intends to take advantage of this chaos as a chance to showcase its “bridging role” in terms of conflict mediation. Kishida may hope to reinforce regional peace and stability, similar to South Korea’s efforts under former President Moon Jae-in.
The Diplomat
You can read more at the link, but North Korea has repeatedly said no to any summit with Japan that includes the abduction issue or missile tests. Those two issues are really the only thing the Japanese care to discuss with North Korea thus why there will be no summit.
The missile may have failed, but the test is only a failure if the engineers did not learn anything from it. As we have seen in the past, the North Koreans learn from their mistakes and have successfully built a number of capable missile systems:
Defense Minister Shin Won-sik said Sunday that North Korea’s hypersonic missile launched earlier this month was “unsuccessful in its last glide flight” but predicted that the North’s hypersonic missile with an intermediate range could be “successful one day.”
Shin made the assessment during an interview with public broadcaster KBS after the North claimed it successfully test-fired the Hwasongpho-16B, a new intermediate-range ballistic missile tipped with a hypersonic warhead.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
