DIPLOMACY AT NATO
Leif-Eric Easley, an international studies professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said North Korea was following a pattern of staging weapons tests in time for diplomatic events, such as the planned South Korea-Japan talks.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, in Lithuania for the NATO summit, convened an emergency national security council meeting to discuss the launch and vowed to use the summit to call for strong international solidarity to confront such threats.
Yoon, at a meeting with Japan, Australia and New Zealand, said the North’s launch posed a direct challenge to peace in the region and the world, and to the norms-based order.
“We cannot condone these provocations, and we must respond to North Korea’s reckless actions through strong responses and solidarity of the international community,” Yoon said, according to his office.
Japan’s Matsuno said the launch threatened regional and international peace and stability, and that Japan had lodged a protest through diplomatic channels in Beijing.
Yoon is expected to discuss ways to boost joint responses to North Korean threats at separate talks with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida later on Wednesday.
With a wary eye on North Korea’s military moves and other rising challenges in the region, Yoon has moved to repair frayed ties with Japan and reduce historical disputes that have limited cooperation between the two US allies.
Nuclear envoys of South Korea, the US and Japan held a phone call on Wednesday to strongly condemn the North’s missile launch as a serious provocation that can “never be justified,” Seoul’s foreign ministry said. They also criticised Pyongyang’s recent threats against what they described as the allies’ normal flight activity in international waters.
The three countries’ top military generals gathered for a rare trilateral meeting in Hawaii just before the missile launch.
Source: CNA
