North Korea announced test launches of new long-range missiles this weekend.
This is the first test of its kind in months, and reinforces the idea that the regime wants to strengthen its military capacity after the stalemate in nuclear disarmament negotiations with the United States.
The North Korean news agency said Monday that the missiles, in development for two years, demonstrated their ability to hit targets 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) away during flight tests on Saturday and Sunday.
North Korea described its new missiles as a "strategic weapon of great importance" that responds to the call of its dictator, Kim Jong Un, to reinforce the country's military power, which suggests that
they are being developed so that they have the capacity to carry nuclear warheads.
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North Korea says it needs nuclear weapons to deter what it calls hostility from the United States and South Korea, and has long tried to
use the threat of such an arsenal to extract much-needed economic aid
or apply pressure.
North Korea and its ally China engaged South Korea and United States-led UN forces in the 1950-53 Korean War, a conflict that ended in an armistice that has yet to be replaced by a peace treaty.
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North Korean state media published photos of a rocket fired from a launch truck and what appeared to be
a missile with wings and fins moving through the air.
The international community is hell-bent on North Korea abandoning its nuclear arsenal and has long used a combination of threatening sanctions and the promise of financial aid to try to influence this nation.
But US-led negotiations on the nuclear issue have stalled since
the failure of a summit between Kim Jong Un and then-President Donald Trump
in 2019.
At the time, the Trump administration rejected Kim's demand for major sanctions relief in exchange for the dismantling of an aging nuclear complex.
North Korea ended a yearlong hiatus in ballistic testing in March after launching two short-range missiles into the sea, continuing the tradition of
testing each new incoming government to gauge Washington's response.
So far, the
Kim administration has rejected the Joe Biden administration's proposals for dialogue,
demanding that Washington first abandon its "hostile" policies, referring to maintaining sanctions and the military alliance with South Korea.
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There had been no launches in months, allegedly because Kim has focused his efforts on fending off the coronavirus and saving an economy damaged by sanctions, recent summers floods and border closures amid the coronavirus pandemic.
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Experts have warned that
the economic situation is dire,
although monitoring groups have yet to detect signs of mass starvation or major instability.
The test reports come before the US special representative for North Korea, Sung Kim, met with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts in Tokyo on Tuesday to discuss stalled nuclear diplomacy with North Korea.