North Korea said Thursday it has test-fired the new strategic cruise missile Pulhwasal-3-31 for the first time as part of its “regular and obligatory” activities to develop and upgrade weapons systems.
The missile launch on Wednesday did not affect the safety of the North’s neighboring countries and has nothing to do with regional security, according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
“The test-fire is a process of constant updating of the weapon system and a regular and obligatory activity,” of the Missile General Bureau and its affiliated defense science institutes, the KCNA said in an English-language dispatch. It did not disclose the missiles’ flight details.
The South Korean military said Wednesday it detected the North’s launches of several cruise missiles toward the Yellow Sea at around 7 a.m.
It marked North Korea’s first known cruise missile launch since September 2023, when the country test-fired two long-range strategic cruise missiles with mock nuclear warheads toward the Yellow Sea.
Cruise missiles fly low and maneuver, making them better at evading missile defenses. Last year, North Korea launched Hwasal-1 and -2 strategic cruise missiles presumed to be capable of carrying tactical nuclear weapons. Hwasal means an arrow in Korean.
The launch of a cruise missile is not a direct violation of multiple United Nations Security Council resolutions banning the North’s use of ballistic missile technology. But it could pose a serious threat to a country’s security as such missiles could be topped by nuclear warheads.
The latest provocation came after North Korea launched a solid-fuel hypersonic missile into the East Sea on Jan. 14 in its first missile firing this year.
Pyongyang also claimed last week it had tested an underwater nuclear attack drone in protest of the latest joint military drills among South Korea, the United States and Japan.
North Korea has dialed up tensions on the Korean Peninsula with weapons tests and hard-worded rhetoric in an election year for South Korea and the U.S.
During a year-end party meeting, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un defined inter-Korean ties as relations between “two states hostile to each other” and vowed to “suppress” the whole territory of South Korea in the event of a contingency.
At a key parliamentary meeting last week, Kim called for revising the country’s constitution to define South Korea as the North’s “primary foe” and announced the country will abandon its decadeslong policy of seeking reconciliation and unification with the South.
Source: Yonhap News Agency
