North Korea fired a close-range ballistic missile and other weapons toward the sea on Tuesday, South Korea’s military said, in the isolated country’s first weapons launch event since April 19. The missile was launched from Jongju, a city near North Korea’s west coast, and flew about 80 kilometers, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.
South Korea’s military said North Korea also launched other kinds of projectiles, though it did not elaborate. South Korean media reported that the additional weapons systems included multiple rocket launch systems and that the simultaneous firing of different types of weapons was likely meant to test whether they could evade South Korean and U.S. defenses.
The launch matters because it comes as North Korea keeps pressing ahead with weapons development while deepening ties with Russia and China. Kim Jong Un has focused on modernizing North Korea’s nuclear and missile arsenal since his nuclear diplomacy with U.S. President Donald Trump collapsed in 2019, and Pyongyang has since expanded cooperation with Moscow by sending troops and conventional arms to support Russia’s war against Ukraine while also working to cement ties with Beijing.
Last week in Beijing, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping voiced opposition to what Putin described as “foreign policy isolation, economic sanctions, military pressure and other methods of creating threats to the security” of North Korea. Russia and China have repeatedly frustrated efforts to tighten international sanctions on North Korea despite its banned weapons tests, giving Pyongyang room to keep testing systems that South Korea says it is ready to repel.
The timing of the launch suggests North Korea is still looking for gaps in regional defenses while counting on diplomatic cover from its partners. With sanctions still in place and Pyongyang showing no sign of easing its weapons drive, the next question is not whether it will test again, but how far it will push the mix of missiles and other systems that it is trying to perfect.
