North Korea fired a ballistic missile off its east coast on Sunday, South Korea’s military said.<\/p>\n
“The North has launched an unidentified ballistic missile toward the East Sea,” it said, referring to a body of water also known as the Sea of Japan.<\/p>\n
Japan’s defence ministry also said it detected a possible ballistic missile, which landed in an unspecified location around 8:08 am (2308 GMT Saturday).<\/p>\n
North Korea last staged a ballistic missile test in November, after US President Donald Trump approved South Korea’s plan to build a nuclear-powered submarine.<\/p>\n
Pyongyang has significantly stepped up missile testing in recent years.<\/p>\n
Analysts say this drive is aimed at improving precision strike capabilities, challenging the United States as well as South Korea and testing weapons before potentially exporting them to Russia.<\/p>\n
Pyongyang is also set to hold a landmark congress of its ruling party in the coming weeks — its first in five years.<\/p>\n
Economic policy, as well as defence and military planning, are likely to be high on the agenda.<\/p>\n
Ahead of that conclave, leader Kim Jong Un ordered the “expansion” and modernisation of the country’s missile production and the construction of more factories to meet growing demand.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, state media reported that Kim had paid a visit to a facility involved in making tactical guided weapons.<\/p>\n
And he ordered them to expand current production capacity by 250 percent, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.<\/p>\n
burs-kjk\/oho\/lb<\/p>\n
\u00a9 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
North Korea fired a ballistic missile off its east coast on Sunday, South Korea’s military said. “The North has launched an unidentified ballistic missile toward the East Sea,” it said, referring to a body of water also known as the Sea of Japan. Japan’s defence ministry also said it detected a possible ballistic missile, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23015,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"subtitle":"","format":"standard","override":[{"template":"7","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"left-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"topbottom","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_share_counter":"1","show_view_counter":"1","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"1","show_post_related":"0","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0"},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"jnews_post_split":{"post_split":[{"template":"1","tag":"h2","numbering":"asc","mode":"normal","first":"0","enable_toc":"0","toc_type":"normal"}]},"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23017,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23013\/revisions\/23017"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.iq\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}