North Korea fired what appeared to be four short-range guided missiles into the East Sea over the weekend, ratcheting up tension that had seemed to have deescalated amid South Korea’s repeated overtures for dialogue.

Experts said the surprise launches appeared intended to show Pyongyang’s discontent over the recent Korea-U.S. summit during which Presidents Park Geun-hye and Barack Obama repeated their resolve not to tolerate the North’s provocations.

The North fired one device between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. on Sunday. The launch came after it fired two devices between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. on Saturday and another between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., Seoul’s Defense Ministry said, noting that the type of weapon remained unclear pending investigation.





Seoul denounced the launches Sunday, urging the North to behave responsibly as a member of the international community.

“We think it is deplorable that the North does not stop its provocative behavior including the firing of guided launch vehicles,” Unification Ministry spokesperson Kim Hyung-seok told reporters.

Observers said the device was presumed to be an upgraded version of the KN-02 short-range missile with a range of around 120 km. The solid-fuel, mobile KN-02 was developed based on the former Soviet-Union’s short-range SS-21 missile.

Others said the weapon could be the North’s new ground-to-ship missile or a rocket fired by a long-range artillery piece.

But a Seoul official said the type of weapon was not yet clear.

“It is a short-range weapon that is close to the level of the KN-02. But it could be a different type of rocket. We need to analyze the trajectory to ascertain exactly what was fired,” he said, declining to be named.

The Defense Ministry said it was maintaining the highest level of readiness against North Korean provocations.

“To prepare for the possibility that the launches could lead to another provocation, we have stepped up our monitoring posture and are maintaining the highest preparedness,” ministry spokesperson Kim Min-seok told reporters.

The launches came on the same day the Rodong Shinmun, the ruling Worker’s Party’s newspaper, denounced the U.S. plan to test its inter-continental ballistic missile Minuteman III as a security threat to the country.

This year, Pyongyang has launched short-range missiles into the East Sea twice ― on Feb. 10 and March 15.

Given the launches came after the Korea-U.S. summit and end of the allied military drills, Pyongyang might have used them to underscore its dissatisfaction, Chin Hee-gwan, unification professor at Inje University, said.

“During the summit, there was nothing that met the North’s expectations. The allies’ leaders only stressed there would be no rewards for bad behavior. The launches, thus, appear to be Pyongyang’s response to the summit result,” he said.

Some observers said the launches underscored that the North was unwilling to positively respond to Seoul’s proposals for dialogue and might continue its confrontational stance for some time.

“The North has shown its hard-line stance through its bellicose rhetoric for months and is expected to continue its hostile moves until July 27 (the anniversary of the armistice agreement),” said Ahn Chan-il, the director of the World North Korea Research Center.

Some others dismissed any political interpretation of the launches, saying they were intended to upgrade their missile capabilities.

“It would be just part of its routine exercises. If it were meant to pressure the U.S., it wouldn’t have launched a short-range delivery vehicle,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies.

Meanwhile, North Korea could have as many as 200 mobile launchers for its ballistic missiles, nearly double the number previously estimated by Seoul officials, according to a Pentagon report submitted to the U.S. Congress.

North Korea appears to have accumulated up to 200 so-called transporter erector launchers, including up to 100 for short-range Scud missiles, 50 for medium-range Nodong missiles and 50 for long-range Musudan missiles, the state-run Korea Institute for Defense Analyses said.

South Korea’s military and intelligence authorities previously presumed the communist country to have up to 94 mobile launchers.

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)