North Korea successfully tested its multiple-warhead missile capability, state media said yesterday, as dozens more trash-laden balloons sent by Pyongyang landed in the South.
Relations between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in years, with Pyongyang ramping up weapons testing while bombarding the South with balloons full of trash it says are in retaliation to similar missives sent northwards by activists in the South.
The balloons briefly forced Incheon Airport, Seoul’s major hub, to close on Wednesday and, in response to the successive launches, South Korea has fully suspended a tension-reducing military treaty and re-started propaganda loudspeaker broadcasts and live-fire drills near the border.
North Korea claimed it had “successfully conducted the separation and guidance control test of individual mobile warheads”, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said yesterday.
The “separated mobile warheads were guided correctly to the three coordinate targets” during the test carried out on Wednesday, it said.
“The test is aimed at securing the MIRV capability,” KCNA added, referring to multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle technology — the ability to fire multiple warheads on a single ballistic missile.
South Korea’s military had said the North’s test on Wednesday appeared to be of a hypersonic missile, but that the launch ended in a mid-air explosion.
