North welcomes Blinken with short-range missile test

North Korea fired at least three short-range ballistic missiles into the East Sea on Monday as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Seoul for the third Summit for Democracy.

People at Seoul Station in Jung District, central Seoul, watch a television report about the North's latest ballistic missile launch on Monday morning. [NEWS1]

North Korea fired at least three short-range ballistic missiles into the East Sea on Monday as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Seoul for the third Summit for Democracy.

According to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), the missiles were launched from the vicinity of Pyongyang between 7:44 a.m. and 8:22 a.m., flew approximately 300 kilometers (186 miles) and landed in the East Sea.

The South Korean military said it shared information gathered from tracking the missiles with U.S. and Japanese officials.

While the military said it is conducting a complete analysis of the launches, a JCS official who spoke to the media on condition of anonymity said the North fired “at least three missiles whose trajectories resembled that of the KN-24,” referring to a North Korean solid-fuel ballistic missile with a demonstrated range of 410 kilometers and a payload of 400-500 kilograms (882-1,102 pounds).

According to past South Korean analyses, KN-24 missiles can conduct mid-flight “pull-up” maneuvers like Russian Iskander missiles to orient onboard targeting systems and evade interception.

On Monday, the JCS issued a statement that “strongly condemned” the latest missile launches, calling them “a clear provocation that imperils peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.”

The latest launches punctuated a month of relative inactivity in weapons testing by the North, which launched cruise missiles on five separate occasions earlier this year.

The North’s last ballistic missile launch took place on Jan. 14, when it fired a solid-fuel intermediate-range ballistic missile that the regime’s state media said carried a hypersonic warhead.

The launches occurred the same day that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in South Korea to attend the Summit for Democracy and four days after South Korea and the United States concluded their annual Freedom Shield joint exercise.

While the allies say the drills are defensive in nature, the North has long claimed the annual exercises are rehearsals for an invasion of its territory.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks in Moscow on Monday after polling stations closed. The Russian president won another six-year term following his election victory. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

On Monday, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulating him on his reelection, according to Pyongyang’s state-controlled Korean Central News Agency.

The two leaders last met during their summit in the Russian Far East in September, where they pledged to deepen security and economic cooperation between their countries.

Since the summit, North Korea has ramped up weapons and ammunition supplies to Russia, according to intelligence disclosed by South Korean, U.S. and Ukrainian authorities.

Last month, Seoul’s Defense Minister Shin Won-sik told reporters Pyongyang had supplied Moscow with 6,700 shipping containers of materiel equivalent to approximately 3 million rounds of 152-millimeter artillery shells or 500,000 122-millimeter shells.

In an interview with Kyodo News Agency on Wednesday, Yuriy Belousov, head of the War Crimes Department of Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General, said Russia has also fired 50 North Korean KN-23 and KN-24 missiles into Ukraine.

Although Belousov said that 80 percent of North Korean missiles failed to hit their target, he and officials from South Korea and the United States say that the North is likely receiving data from Russia that could help Pyongyang improve its missiles’ accuracy and capabilities.

In return for weapons shipments, Russia likely provided satellite technology that helped the North launch its first military spy satellite into orbit in November, as well as food and other necessary supplies to the impoverished North, Shin said.

The defense minister also warned that Russian technology transfers to North Korea could escalate if Moscow continues to require North Korean arms.

At the JoongAng-CSIS Forum held earlier this month, CSIS Senior Vice President for Asia and Korea Victor Cha said that Kim Jong-un likely “did not travel to Russia by train just to obtain food and fuel” from Putin and expressed concern Moscow could provide Pyongyang with nuclear submarine technology, citing recent state media reports from Pyongyang that said Kim was “pleased” after reviewing plans for such assets.

BY LIM JEONG-WON, MICHAEL LEE [lee.junhyuk@joongang.co.kr]