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For the past two weeks, missile launches have occurred at a frantic pace on both sides of the border. After launching a missile over Japan on Tuesday, North Korea responded on Thursday to a salvo fired by the South the day before. A US aircraft carrier conducted exercises off the Korean coast. Tensions have risen to a point not seen since the collapse of negotiations with Donald Trump. How can the situation evolve?
With Nicolas Rocca, RFI correspondent in Seoul
For twelve days now, the show of force on both sides of the 38th parallel has resembled a game of chess. After North Korea fired missiles in the morning, a US aircraft carrier simulated exercises in which it shot down precisely one North Korean missile.
fighters and bombers
In the afternoon, eight North Korean fighters and four bombers flew in formation near the inter-Korean border. Seoul responded by sending some thirty of its fighters. Pyongyang accuses Washington of increasing military tension and threatening the stability of the peninsula, among other things, by ordering the return to the region of the USS Ronald Reagan, the US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, on Wednesday, October 5.
After years of tension, Tokyo and Seoul suddenly grew closer on Thursday. After a telephone conversation, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida agreed on the need to show North Korea that “its reckless provocations have consequences.”
A seventh nuclear test?
Tension is unlikely to ease as speculation mounts about a seventh North Korean nuclear test in the coming days. However, the South Korean intelligence services assured that it should be held rather after the Chinese Communist Party congress that begins on October 16.