Jubilee Post News & Views
Special Desk
While the world is focusing upon Omicron, the new variant of covid virus, North Korea went ahead in its defense mission and fired a suspected ballistic missile off its east coast on.
Interestingly this was hours before South Korean President Moon Jae-in attended a ground breaking ceremony for a rail line that he hopes will eventually connect the divided Korean peninsula.
North Korea leader Kim Jong Un had recently said he plans strengthen the military power. “United States condemns the ballistic missile launch,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement. The launch violated multiple UN Security Council resolutions and posed a threat to the North’s neighbors, it said.
The presumed missile was fired in the morning on Wednesday from an inland location, over the east coast and into the sea, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
Hours later, Moon visited the South Korean east coast city of Goseong, near the border with the North, where he broke ground for a new rail line that he called a stepping stone for peace and regional balance on the peninsula.
Moon acknowledged the launch raised concerns of tensions, and called for North Korea to make sincere efforts for dialogue.
“We should not give up the hope for dialogue in order to fundamentally overcome this situation,” he said.
Reconnecting the two Koreas by rail was a central issue in meetings between Kim and Moon in 2018, but those efforts went nowhere as talks aimed at convincing North Korea to surrender its nuclear weapons in exchange for easing international sanctions faltered in 2019.
Kim’s New Year speech made no mention of efforts by South Korea to restart negotiations or offers by the United States to talk, though analysts noted that doesn’t mean he has closed the door on diplomacy.
