Report: North Korea fires 'unidentified projectile'

by Rachel More
| March 28, 2020 7:02 PM

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea has fired an “unidentified projectile” toward the Sea of Japan, South Korean news agency Yonhap reports, citing the military Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul.

No further details were immediately available.

North Korea test-fired a number of ballistic missiles over the course of March, following a three-month pause.

Sunday’s launch is believed to be the North’s fourth major weapons test this year, with the nation also carrying out small artillery firing drills, according to Yonhap.

The rogue nuclear nation is banned from testing ballistic missiles by U.N. resolutions, and has been slapped with tough international sanctions to deter it from continuing to develop rockets that could be equipped with nuclear warheads.

Global concerns about North Korea intensified late in 2019 after Pyongyang imposed a year-end deadline for the United States to offer sanctions relief and threatened to send a “Christmas gift,” widely interpreted to mean a weapons test, if demands were not met.

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un said the world would see a “new strategic weapon” from the country in the near future, in a message on Jan. 1.

The Trump administration is demanding that North Korea give up all its nuclear weapons and production facilities in exchange for the lifting of crippling sanctions.

Trump famously said in 2018 that he and Kim “fell in love” and that the North Korean leader wrote him “beautiful letters.”

But after two high-profile one-on-one summits and a meeting last year at the Demilitarized Zone, relations have soured with the nuclear talks near-frozen and Pyongyang once again referring to Trump as a “dotard,” among other insults.

Relations between North and South Korea, which had warmed significantly in the run-up to the two summits between Trump and Kim, have also cooled again recently.

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