Moon says North Korean launch breaks self-imposed moratorium in 2018

Seoul, 24 Mar South Korean President Moon Jae-in today condemned North Korea's launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), stating that this action ends the moratorium on such tests that Pyongyang self-imposed in 2018. During the meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) that he chaired after the launch, Moon “strongly condemned” the test, stating that it ends the aforementioned “promise that State Affairs Commission Chairman Kim Jong-un made to the international community,” according to a statement from the presidential office. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un announced the moratorium on bringing positions closer together ahead of the first summit held in June 2018 by him and then-US President Donald Trump. Another statement issued by the NSC stated that North Korean action poses “a major challenge to the Korean people's hopes for peace and denuclearization on the peninsula, to the demands of the international community and to the efforts of the countries involved seeking a diplomatic solution.” In addition to ending the moratorium, the NSC considers the trial, the first of its kind since November 2017, to be “a serious threat to the region and the international community” and “clearly violates UN Security Council resolutions.” The text ensures that Seoul “will take the necessary countermeasures by cooperating with the countries concerned and the international community on the basis of close cooperation between the Republic of Korea (official name of South Korea) and the US”. The North Korean regime drew up at the 2021 single party congress a five-year plan for arms modernization that is behind its current range of weapons tests (12 since the beginning of the year, a record number). In turn, since the failure of the negotiations with the US in 2019, it has rejected US invitations to dialogue at a time when the country is still completely closed by the pandemic without having vaccinated a single one of its citizens, making it unfeasible to hold high-level face-to-face diplomatic meetings. CHIEF asb/mj