Explained | Record missile tests and military exercises — what is happening in the Korean Peninsula? 

In a record year of tests, North Korea has tested an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile and launched a missile over Japan, both firsts since 2017

The story so far: North Korea said this week that its flurry of missile launches was a practice or simulation to attack South Korea’s airbases and warplanes and paralyse its command systems. The North Korean military said on November 7 that the barrage of missile tests was in response to the large-scale military exercises between the United States and South Korea, which it described as an “open provocation aimed at intentionally escalating the tension” in the Korean peninsula and “a dangerous war drill”.

While North Korea has engaged in testing missiles regularly over the years, here’s a look at what is different about this year’s record launches, with experts suspecting another North Korean nuclear test to be imminent.

On October 31, the day South Korea and the U.S. began one of their largest joint military exercises, North Korea demanded the two countries halt the exercises, calling them a provocation and military threat that may draw “more powerful follow-up measures” from Pyongyang.

The joint military exercise, called operation “Vigilant Storm”, featured about 240 warplanes that conducted around 1,600 sorties. The drills also featured America’s B-1B Lancer bombers, which the U.S. had last flown over the South in 2017 when Pyongyang carried out its last nuclear test.

Washington and Seoul believe that North Korea’s Kim Jong-un is just to resume nuclear testing and have embraced a “deterrence” strategy involving major military drills. Notably, some current and former officials have cautioned that the drills may exacerbate tensions.

On November 2, as the air drills were underway, North Korea issued another warning saying it could no longer “tolerate” such “rashness and provocation”. The same day, Pyongyang fired a total of 23 missiles, the most ever in a day, with one landing close to South Korean shores and prompting a rare warning for Ulleungdo Island’s residents to seek shelter in bunkers. Seoul’s military said it was the first time such a close brush had happened since the peninsula was divided at the end of Korean War hostilities in 1953.

One short-range ballistic missile crossed the Northern Limit Line, the de facto maritime border between the North and the South. North Korea also fired an artillery barrage into a maritime “buffer zone” set up in 2018 in a bid to reduce tensions between the two countries.