AVOID ATTENTION?

The North Korean missile launch “appears to have been carried out to divert attention from international criticism of its troop deployment,” Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in North Korea, told AFP. Seoul.

Seoul has long accused the nuclear-armed North of sending weapons to help Moscow fight kyiv and says Pyongyang decided to deploy troops en masse following Kim Jong Un’s signing of a mutual defense agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin in June.

The troop deployment poses a “significant security threat”, Seoul said, with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Wednesday calling on the North to withdraw its troops.

South Korea’s military had warned lawmakers the day before that preparations were “almost complete for a long-range ICBM-class missile” and that a launch could be aimed at testing the North’s atmospheric re-entry technology.

Seoul has warned that Russia could provide new technology or expertise to Pyongyang in exchange for weapons and troops to help it fight Ukraine.

It’s possible that “Russia has actually provided new technology to re-enter the atmosphere,” Ahn Chan-il, a defector-turned-researcher who heads the Global Institute for North Korea Studies, told AFP .

But it’s more likely that Thursday’s test was intended to distract from the troop deployment and attract “world attention ahead of the U.S. presidential election,” Ahn added.

Seoul, a major arms exporter, said it was considering sending weapons directly to Ukraine in response, something it had previously resisted due to its long-standing domestic politics that prevent it from send weapons into active conflicts.

North Korea has denied sending troops to Russia, but in the first comment published last week in state media, its vice foreign minister said that if such a deployment were to take place, it would be in accordance with the law. international.

Pyongyang is barred from carrying out tests using ballistic technology due to several rounds of UN sanctions, but leader Kim has accelerated launches this year, with experts warning he could test weapons before providing them to Russia.