The communist regime of North Korea reportedly fired several ballistic missiles on Monday, an apparent gesture of “welcome” to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who landed in Seoul, South Korea, on Sunday to attend President Joe Biden’s “Summit for Democracy.”
The “Summit for Democracy” is an event Biden founded virtually in 2021, ostensibly to bring together the leaders of the free world to discuss ways to protect the integrity of free states and combat authoritarianism. The “Summit for Democracy” has been met with ridicule and alarm in prior iterations, as the inaugural summit featured the State Department causing a “technical error” that censored a map of Taiwan that did not conform to the Chinese Communist Party’s false borders. Last year, the most prominent headlines on the Summit for Democracy were mocking statements from China and Russia declaring the event as unserious.
The missiles fired on Monday did not hit any targets or cause any damage, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) told reporters, but were nonetheless a threat intended to respond to both the presence of America’s top diplomat on Korean soil and the recent culmination of joint American-South Korean military exercises. The missile attack followed another apparent response to the joint exercises, a propaganda display last week in which communist dictator Kim Jong-un appeared in photos alongside North Korean “new-type” tanks, and purportedly drove one himself.
Kim warned in North Korean state media on Thursday that his country boasts the “most powerful tanks in the world.”
“North Korea fired at least three missiles, and their trajectories were similar to those of KN-24,” an unnamed South Korean official told the newswire service Yonhap. The JCS described them as short-range ballistic missiles and reported that they flew out of Pyongyang and landed in the East Sea (or Sea of Japan).
“The KN-24 is a solid-fuel ballistic missile with a range of up to 410 km and a payload of 400-500 kg,” Yonhap clarified.
The Korea JoongAng Daily observed that the ballistic missile launch was the first of its kind since January 14 and appeared to be of solid-fuel missiles, which take longer to load and fire than liquid-fuel models. In January, North Korea claimed to debut both new missile models and an alleged underwater nuclear weapon system.
“Our army’s underwater nuke-based countering posture is being further rounded off and its various maritime and underwater responsive actions will continue to deter the hostile military maneuvers of the navies of the U.S. and its allies,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), North Korea’s flagship state propaganda outlet, reported at the time.
The South Korean Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Monday stating that both Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul and his American counterpart, Blinken, condemned the incident.
“The ministers condemned North Korea for firing several missiles right before the Summit for Democracy and said the North’s continued provocations will only work to strengthen the coordination among South Korea, the U.S. and Japan, and with the international community,” the Foreign Ministry asserted, adding that Washington and Seoul would continue to devise strategies to sanction North Korea and deprive it of funding to use on illicit weapons development. North Korea is already under one of the world’s strictest sanctions regimes through the United Nations, which bans its development of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.
The office of South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol separately affirmed on Monday Blinken’s commitment “to respond firmly to North Korea’s provocations and for peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.”
North Korean state media does not appear to have addressed the missile launch in its English-language news coverage on Monday. Rodong Sinmun, the communist state newspaper, published a screed on Monday typical of the outlet condemning the Summit for Democracy.
“The imperialists fuel confrontation between forces and unhesitatingly commit such infringements of sovereignty and human rights,” Rodong Sinmun seethed, “as armed invasion of sovereign states and massacre of civilians while touting ‘defending of democracy,’ ‘reconstruction of democratic union’ and ‘world summit for democracy.'”
“‘Democracy’ trumpeted by the imperialists is American-style politics that never does people good,” the propaganda outlet declared. “Their coercive enforcement of American-style democracy is aimed at maintaining and consolidating the world order dominated by the U.S.-led Western forces.”
During the opening of the Summit for Democracy in Seoul, Blinken largely focused on the threat posed to free societies by artificial intelligence (AI).
“Revitalizing democracy will require us to shape a technological future that is inclusive, rights-respecting, directed at driving progress in people’s lives, as authoritarian and repressive regimes deploy technologies to undermine democracy and human rights,” Blinken said in his remarks to the summit.
During remarks on Sunday, Blinken emphasized the potential that AI has to aid dictatorships in repressing their own people.
“They’re using AI tools, like facial recognition and bots, to surveil their own citizens. [sic] Harass journalists, human rights defenders, and political dissidents,” Blinken detailed. “Spread mis- and disinformation that undermines free and fair elections, or sets one segment of our societies against another.”
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