U.S. and South Korean officials confirmed Tuesday (March 23) that North Korea launched two cruise missiles from the peninsula’s west coast on March 21. Washington reacted with restraint, and Biden said his administration remains open to dialogue with Pyongyang.
Senior Biden Administration officials confirmed Tuesday at a background briefing that North Korea had test-fired two short-range missiles, saying “this is a routine act by North Korea.
For past missile test launches, the North’s usual practice has been to immediately publicize them through state-run media and for the South Korean military to immediately confirm them. This Time, however, North Korean media did not report last Sunday’s test launch, and South Korean officials said Wednesday that they spotted the test launch but decided not to immediately make the information public and did not elaborate further on the decision.
North Korea’s last missile test launch was nearly a year ago, in April 2020.
Timing: Releasing a Message to the U.S.
The test launch comes just days after Secretary of State John Blinken and Defense Secretary Austin visited South Korea and Japan, vowing to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula. During his visit to Seoul, Blinken said he will work closely with South Korea and Japan to complete a review of U.S. policy toward North Korea in the coming weeks. During his trip, Blinken also criticized North Korea’s human rights record, saying Kim Jong Un’s “repressive government” has engaged in “massive and systematic human rights abuses.
“I think the timing of the North Korean test launch is related to the fact that Biden is about to release his review of North Korea policy,” Harry Kazianis, director of defense studies at the Center for the National Interest, a Washington think tank, told the Voice of America. criticism of Pyongyang in talks about it, North Korea has no expectations from this U.S. administration.”
He argued that North Korea’s test missile launch was a message to the U.S. that “North Korea’s military power is growing by the day and that negotiation is the better way forward,” he said.
Joel Wit, a senior Asia security fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington and a former State Department official, argued that people need not read too much into the test launch.
“I think a lot of people are Googling this test launch of a short-range missile by North Korea right now, and you’ll see that it’s the same missile that was used in response to the U.S. military exercises last April,” he said at a Stimson Center seminar on the North Korean nuclear issue, “and I think if anything this is sending the Biden administration some kind of message or pressure, that’s over-interpreting it.”
Biden: Downplaying it
U.S. officials also downplayed the test launch. A White House official said the launch was a non-ballistic missile, “just a routine missile test,” and did not violate a U.N. Security Council resolution. “We don’t think it’s in our best interest to speculate on something like this,” the senior White House official added.
“I don’t think it should be seen as provocative, on a scale of 1 to 10, if launching an ICBM is 10 and firing a mortar is 1, this should be 2 or 3,” Witt added.
Robert Carlin, a North Korea expert at the Stimson Center, agreed, “If Kim Jong Un had been there for the test launch, it would have meant something different. But he didn’t show up. In fact, according to our observations, North Korea test-fires these short-range missiles frequently every spring.”
The test launch was the first public weapons test by North Korea since the Biden administration took office in January.
Biden himself seemed to downplay the significance of the North Korean move. He told reporters as he returned to the White House from Ohio that it was a routine operation, according to the Defense Department’s assessment. When reporters asked him if this would affect diplomatic behavior, Biden smiled at them and did not respond.
Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, argued that the Biden administration’s response was restrained and that “North Korea should interpret it as a positive goal, which is that the Biden team recognizes that North Korea is a long-term war.”
North Korea: further missile test launches
Yet the Center for the National Interest’s Kachianis argues that the Biden administration needs to be alerted to this test launch.
“Biden should recognize that North Korea is reviewing every aspect of the U.S. stance,” he told Voice of America, “and given their previous response to President Trump‘s rhetoric on North Korea, I think they will respond even more to the Biden administration’s North Korea policy review, even if it’s soon to be followed by a much larger missile test launch. “
“Kim Jong Un doesn’t want to be humiliated, doesn’t want to be perceived as weak, doesn’t want to be ridiculed,” he said.
North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hee said on March 18 that North Korea does not care to cooperate with the United States. In a statement, she said the U.S. has tried to engage with North Korea since mid-February through various means, including phone calls and e-mails, and that it has also tried to reach out to North Korea through a third country, but that these “cheap tricks” are just a way to stall for time and gain public support. She also said that dialogue with the U.S. is a “waste of time” and that there will be no contact or dialogue of any kind between the two countries as long as the U.S. does not cancel its hostile policy toward the DPRK.
Meanwhile, North Korean official media KCNA reported on Tuesday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping exchanged messages on Monday. Kim Jong Un said that the two parties and the two countries need to strengthen their unity and cooperation in order to meet the overall challenge of hostile forces. By “hostile forces,” Kim Jong-un apparently meant the United States. The two sides are willing to work together with the DPRK and relevant parties to adhere to the direction of a political solution to the peninsula issue and maintain peace and stability on the peninsula, Xi said.
Recent Comments