Since we haven’t ticked off the ‘Rocket man’ box on our apocalypse bingo in a little while new reports have emerged that North Korea allegedly fired a ballistic missile test on February 27th according to South Korean and Japanese defense officials. This would be the eighth episode of saber-rattling from the authoritarian dictatorship in 2022. Dictator Kim Jong Un is no doubt emboldened by the global perception of weakness created by the Biden-Harris regime’s failure in Afghanistan and inability to dissuade Russia from invading Ukraine as well as China’s continued pressure on Taiwan and Washington, D.C.
An Emboldened North Korea Only Adds Instability To The World
The Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed the launch report to Seoul publication Yonhap telling the outlet, that the provocative launch occurred in the Sunan area of Pyongyang a mere 133 miles from the South Korean Capital. The missile traveled about 186 miles over the peninsula out to the Sea of Japan and reached an altitude of approximately 203,000 feet, some 200 kilometers higher than the orbit of the International Space Station.
The South Korean military told the press that his missile “appears to be similar to the Pukguksong-2 missile, a road-mobile solid-fuel MRBM,” fired from a “Transporter Erector Launcher (TEL) at a steep angle from the Sunan airfield” adding credence to the assessment of the device as a Medium-Range-Ballistic-Missile introduced in 2017.
According to GlobalSecurity.org,
“The Pukguksong-2 is nuclear-capable, state media claims, and the DPRK says it can travel from 3,000 to 5,500 kilometers (1,900 to 3,400 miles), though Western estimates are more in the range of 2,500 km.”
The reduced estimate by most Western militaries would place US forces in Japan, Taiwan, and the Philippines within attack range, the official range that the North Koreans claim would place mainland Alaska in range.
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command condemned the North’s latest missile launch and called on it to refrain from “further destabilizing acts”
“While we have assessed that this event does not pose an immediate threat to U.S. personnel, territory or that of our allies, we will continue to monitor the situation, the command said in a press release.
“The U.S. commitment to the defense of the ROK and Japan remains ironclad,” it added.
“There have been frequent launches since the start of the year, and North Korea is continuing to rapidly develop ballistic missile technology,” Japan’s Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said in a televised announcement, according to Reuters. The North Koreans unsurprisingly also issued a statement internationally supporting Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
“If their idea was to conduct this at an unguarded moment for the international community while it was responding to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we absolutely cannot condone this,” Kishi said.
