They’re playing war games on both sides of the North-South line between the two Koreas, coming close to the real thing but stopping short of killing their enemies. First there were the U.S. and South Korean warplanes, more than 240 of them led by F-35s configured for both their air forces, then the North Korean warnings of retribution, followed by volley after volley of North Korean missile and cannon shots.
North Korean gunners kept up the beat Thursday, launching an intercontinental ballistic missile of the sort that could theoretically carry a warhead to the U.S.
The missile did not fly over Japan, as originally feared, but dramatized the North’s strategy of intimidating the U.S. and its two northeast Asian allies, Japan and South Korea, as people in Japan’s northern prefectures were urged to look for shelter. North Korea also fired two more short-range missiles on top of all those fired Wednesday.
With each shot it seemed as though war was edging closer, especially after two North Korean shots made waves south of what’s called the Northern Limit Line below which North Korean ships are banned. North Korea doesn’t recognize the dotted lines on maps drawn by the Americans and South Koreans after the Korean War had ended, and they proved it Wednesday with a missile shot near an obscure South Korean island named Ulleungdo 75 miles off the east coast—enough to set off air raid sirens on the island. That also provoked the South into test-firing a few of its own missiles and getting South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol vowing the North would pay “a clear price for the provocations.”
