Pyongyang

Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

With Moon Jae-In’s victory in South Korea, the period of tension on the Korean Peninsula is likely to end. With the rise to power of the new president, South Korea can expect a sharp decline in hostilities with North Korea as well as a resumption of dialogue with China.

Two days after the latest provocative missile test by North Korea, in which it launched a "new type" of ballistic missile, one which experts warned had a substantially longer range than any existing rocket North Korea had fired, on Monday morning North Korea announced that it had successfully conducted a mid-to-long range missile test on Sunday supervised by leader Kim Jong Un which was aimed at verifying the capability to carry a "large scale heavy nuclear warhead."

After North Korea provoked both its neighbors and the US when on Sunday morning it fired off yet another ballistic missile from Kusong near the border with China  - one which this time did not explode upon launch  - just days after the election of a new South Korean president who ironically advocates more engagement with Pyongyang, experts said the missile appeared to be a new type of ballistic missile, and had a far greater range than any other weapon North Korea has successfully launched.

On the eve of a summit in Beijing, and just hours after Pyongyang's chief nuclear negotiator said North Korea is ready to hold talks with the United States "if the conditions are mature", South Korea's Yonhap reports that North Korea has fired a projectile believed to be a ballistic missile, from a region named Kusong located northwest of Pyongyang, where the North previously test-launched its intermediate-range missile.

The nature of the projectile was not immediately clear, a South Korean military official told Reuters.