KBS News:

Anchor: South Korean military authorities believe that North Korea has now moved its intermediate-range Nodong missile launchers closer to the South. Experts say that Pyongyang is trying to penetrate the missile defense shield of THAAD, which Seoul and Washington decided to deploy in South Korea.
Our Kim Bum-soo reports.

Report: The Nodong missiles the North launched Tuesday were fired from Hwangju County, some 45 kilometers south of the capital Pyongyang.

Sources told KBS that the North moved the Nodong missiles closer to the front lines alongside its short-range Scud missiles.

British military intelligence provider Jane’s Yearbooks also analyzed the North’s one-thousand-300 kilometer-range Nodong missiles have been relocated closer to the border.

Experts like Moon Sung-mook at the Institute for National Security Strategy(INSS) told KBS that Pyongyang is trying to penetrate the missile defense shield of THAAD, which Seoul and Washington decided to deploy in South Korea.

[Sound bite: Moon Sung-mook – senior researcher, the Institute for National Security Strategy(Korean)]
“It is very unusual for the North to deploy forward a Nodong missile in Hwangju and fire it… the North may try to take unconventional tactics in operating missiles to maximize its goal considering various circumstantial changes.”

When fired at a higher angle from the more southern location, the descending velocity of a missile can be accelerated. This could increase chances of striking targets in South Korea’s southern regions, including the site for the planned THAAD deployment and port facilities, through which U.S. augmentation troops would arrive on the peninsula in the event of a contingency.

Shin Jong-woo, a researcher at the Korean Defense Forums, says that Pyongyang is also threatening Japanese territories that had been outside the striking range of its missiles.
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