SEOUL: North Korea tested two more short-range missiles yesterday, thumbing its nose at global powers just hours after the UN Security Council condemned the regime’s provocative nuclear test.
Pyongyang also warned ships to stay away from waters off its western coast this week, a sign the country may be gearing up for more missile tests, South Korea’s coast guard said.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted a government source in Seoul as saying the North had test fired one surface-to-air and one surface-to-ship missile off its east coast. The missiles had a range of about 130 km.
North Korea appeared to be displaying its might a day after conducting an underground atomic test in the northeast that the UN Security Council condemned as a “clear violation” of a 2006 resolution banning the regime from developing its nuclear program.
North Korea told the world’s top disarmament body yesterday that it conducted the new nuclear test in a legitimate defense of its national interests.
An Myong Hun, a diplomat from the North Korean mission in Geneva, rejected South Korean and Japanese protests against its nuclear test, and said his country was only protecting itself in view of previous UN Security Council sanctions.
An said the Security Council had unjustly violated North Korean sovereignty by criticizing the country’s actions.
