NORTH KOREA: North Korea test-fired another missile yesterday, according to the Japanese, but South Korea said it had no evidence of a second launch by Pyongyang to coincide with a meeting of Pacific Rim leaders.
North Korea later denounced Seoul as a "flunkeyist" traitor for agreeing to send more troops to Iraq. The North urged South Koreans to protest against the move and told them to vote against parliamentarians who back the decision.
In a statement bound to stir controversy in South Korea, a spokesman for the central committee of what was described as the North Korean Kim Il-sung Socialist Youth League said the South's decision was an unpardonable crime.
It was the communist North's first reaction to Saturday's decision by President Roh Moo-hyun's administration to send more troops to Iraq to back up US-led forces there. Mr Roh deferred a key decision on whether to include combat personnel.
"The US, which launched the war of aggression in Iraq, is reluctant to send its troops to its battlefields. Yet the South Korean authorities are hurling fellow countrymen there, even spending the money collected from the South Korean people as taxes," the North's statement said.
"We bitterly denounce such act as a pro-US submissive act, flunkeyist treachery," it said. The official KCNA news agency published the statement in English.
Suggestions of a second missile test came from Japan's NHK television, which said the North had apparently launched a short-range surface-to-ship missile, following a test-firing on Monday that US officials described as an attempt to steal the limelight from the Bangkok summit.
But South Korea, which seeks to keep relations with Pyongyang on an even keel, said it had no immediate proof of a second launch, although there were conflicting signals about it.
A spokesman for the South Korean Defence Ministry also said it had been unable to confirm the report, but added: "But we cannot say the NHK report is not true for sure."
In Tokyo, Japan's defence agency said it had received a report that "North Korea may have fired a surface-to-ship missile".
The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Mr Alexander Losyukov, was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency as saying any such launch was within North Korea's rights. - (Reuters)