North Korea defends its missile launches

• North Korea’s recent missile launches have not harmed civil aviation.
• They have not posed a threat to neighboring countries.
• It is acting as a legitimate defense.

The latest barrage of ballistic missile launches by North Korea has been justified as a reasonable response to what it has described as a long-standing threat from American armed troops.

According to officials and a statement from the nation’s aviation authority, the missile launches had not also compromised civil aviation safety or presented a threat to nearby nations, according to a report on Saturday from North Korea’s state-run KCNA news agency.

The remark from Pyongyang follows recent criticism of North Korea’s six missile launches in a 12-day period by the United Nations civil aviation body, including the launch of an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan on Tuesday.

According to a spokeswoman for the local aviation agency, “(the missile tests) did not pose any threat or harm to the safety of civil aviation as well as the safety of neighboring countries and areas.”

North Korea’s national aviation issued a statement in which it was quoted as saying: “The missile test launch by the DPRK is a regular and planned self-defensive step for defending the country’s security and the regional peace from the US direct military threats that have endured for more than half a century.”

The acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, is DPRK.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which the UN agency said had recently denounced the missile launches as posing a major safety danger to international aviation, was criticized in Saturday’s statement.

According to North Korea, such criticism is “a political provocation by the US and its vassal forces aimed at infringing upon the sovereignty of the DPRK,” according to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

In recent weeks, Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington have increased their combined military exercises and conducted further naval drills using the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier strike group of the US Navy.

In response to what seemed to be a North Korean bombing exercise close to their shared border, Seoul scrambled fighter fighters on Thursday. This drill involved the largest group of North Korean jets ever seen thus close to the border.

According to analysts, Pyongyang has taken advantage of the fact that the world is preoccupied with the war in Ukraine to undertake increasingly aggressive nuclear tests.

The missile launches come as North Korea has conducted a record number of weapons tests this year and as leader Kim Jong Un claims his nation has developed an “irreversible” nuclear capability, virtually ruling out the chance of denuclearization negotiations.

Long before China’s Party Congress on October 16, officials in Seoul and Washington have been issuing warnings that Pyongyang might also undertake another nuclear test.

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