North Korea may launch ICBM in show of strength

Bloomberg

Kim Jong-un may be preparing to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) to coincide with US President Joe Biden’s trip to the region, as the North Korean leader battles a Covid-19 outbreak posing one of the greatest crises faced by his regime.
Kim looks poised to test launch an ICBM in the next two to four days, CNN said, citing a US official familiar with the latest intelligence assessment. South Korea national security adviser Kim Tae-hyo told reporters an ICBM test could be imminent, without giving a more detailed timeframe.
North Korea’s ICBMs are designed to deliver a nuclear warhead to the US mainland, and the country fired one about two months ago for the first time in more than four years — highlighting the feat in a slickly produced video shown on state TV.
Preparations can be watched by spy satellites, which have been trained on an area near Pyongyang’s main international airport after the two ICBM tests in March — only one was successful.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the CNN report. Japan’s top government spokesman, Hirokazu Matsuno, told a briefing in Tokyo
that North Korea’s ballistic missiles threaten peace and stability,
without directly addressing the CNN report that a launch may be imminent. Kim presided over a Politburo meeting on policies to halt an outbreak that his government said has infected about 1.7 million people and killed 62 in the past few weeks, the official Korean Central News Agency reported. Top leadership also chastised officials who failed “to properly handle affairs in the current health crisis due to a shortage of their experience,” it said.
North Korea has ignored offers of Covid-19 aid from South Korea and others, and the isolated country is one of only two in the world that has not started a vaccination program against the virus, according to the UN.