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Just one day after test-firing three ballistic missiles, North Korea announced on Wednesday that the drill was part of its training for a preemptive attack against South Korea’s major facilities and U.S. forces in the South. The move is understood as a form of protest against Seoul’s decision to introduce the U.S. advanced missile defense system THAAD, and an attempt to widen the chasm between those in the South who support and oppose the battery deployment.
North Korea’s state broadcaster Korean Central Television and the Party-run publication Rodong Sinmun respectively explained the North had “limited the range of the missiles to simulate preemptively striking the South’s ports and airbases, which are within the strategic zone of the American imperialists’ to-be-deployed nuclear war equipment,” and that it had “once again reviewed the characteristics of movements of the nuclear warhead trigger device that is attached to ballistic missiles aiming at specific target areas from set altitudes.”
In other words, North Korea claims its recent test-firing was targeting Seongju, where the THAAD battery will be deployed, as well as ports in Busan and Pohang, and airbases in Gimhae and Daegu, where U.S. forces would reinforce their troops under emergency conditions.
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