North Korea Says Missile Test Simulated Attack on South's Airfields
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - North Korea said on Wednesday it had conducted a ballistic missile test that simulated preemptive strikes against South Korean ports and airfields used by the US military, a likely reference to the launches of three missiles on Tuesday.
The North's leader, Kim Jong Un, supervised the exercise that successfully tested the simulated detonation of nuclear warheads mounted on missiles, its official KCNA news agency said, Reuters reported.
KCNA did not give the date of the exercise, as it customarily reports activities of its leader without dates or locations. Rodong Sinmun, the ruling Workers' Party's official newspaper, carried photographs of Kim with military aides, apparently observing a ballistic missile exercise.
North Korea fired three ballistic missiles that flew between 500 km and 600 km (300-360 miles) into the sea off its east coast, South Korea's military said, in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions and the latest in a series of provocative moves by the isolated country after a series of nuclear weapons tests.
"The drill was conducted by limiting the firing range under the simulated conditions of making preemptive strikes at ports and airfields in the operational theater in South Korea where the US imperialists' nuclear war hardware is to be hurled," KCNA said.
"And it once again examined the operational features of the detonating devices of nuclear warheads mounted on the ballistic rockets at the designated altitude over the target area."
Tuesday's missile launches were seen as a show of force a week after South Korea and the United States chose a site in the South to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to counter threats from the North.
North Korea had threatened a "physical response" to the move.
Late on Tuesday, North Korean state media called US Ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert a "mentally deranged hooligan" and "a heinous war maniac" for flying in a US fighter jet earlier this month.
