North Korea fires off missiles in first direct challenge to Biden administration

North Korea fired off multiple short-range missiles this past weekend after denouncing Washington for going forward with joint military exercises with South Korea, according to people familiar with the situation.

The missile tests, which had not previously been reported, represent North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s first direct challenge to US President Joe Biden, whose aides have not yet outlined their approach to the regime’s nuclear threat amid an ongoing review of US-North Korea policy.

For weeks, US defence officials warned that intelligence indicated North Korea might carry out missile tests. The regime elevated its complaints about US military exercises last week, with Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, warning that if the Biden administration “wants to sleep in peace for the coming four years, it had better refrain from causing a stink”.

The tests put renewed pressure on the United States to develop a strategy to address a nuclear threat that has bedeviled successive Republican and Democratic administrations for decades.

State Department spokesman Ned Price has said the Biden administration wants to develop a “new approach” to North Korea. US diplomats have informed allies in Asia that the strategy will differ from President Donald Trump’s top-down approach of meeting directly with Kim Jong Un and President Barack Obama’s bottom-up formulation, which swore off engagement until Pyongyang changed its behaviour.

Both policies failed to stop North Korea from advancing its weapons systems and repressing its citizens through a combination of mass surveillance, torture and political-prisoner camps condemned by human rights groups around the world.

The remaining benefit of Mr Trump’s summit diplomacy is that the regime has refrained from detonating a nuclear device or launching a long-range missile since Mr Trump met with Mr Kim in Singapore in 2018.

The Biden administration was mindful that it could be criticised as dithering in the event that North Korea were to restart its nuclear provocations. Those concerns became more urgent this month when US intelligence detected signals that North Korea may resume its testing. Satellite imagery suggesting an uptick in activity at North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear research centre also worried US officials.

Biden administration officials disclosed to reporters that US officials attempted to contact North Korea through several channels starting in mid-February but did not receive a response. US officials did not say whether they made any substantive proposals to North Korea. North Korea’s first vice foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, made clear that the regime was not satisfied with what was communicated.

“We don’t think there is a need to respond to the US delaying-time trick again,” Mr Choe said in a statement. “We will disregard such an attempt of the US in the future, too.”

The US State Department did not respond to a request for comment about the tests, which were discovered by US officials through intelligence collection efforts outside the country.