(LEAD) Yoon warns N. Korea will pay for provocations

(ATTN: UPDATES throughout with remarks, details, photo)
By Kim Deok-hyun

SEOUL, March 16 (Yonhap) -- President Yoon Suk Yeol warned Thursday that North Korea will certainly pay for provocations as he attended an emergency security meeting following the North's latest launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Yoon attended the National Security Council meeting right before he headed to Tokyo for a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida where security cooperation against the North's nuclear and missile threats are expected to be a key topic.

"North Korea will certainly pay for reckless provocations," Yoon told the NSC meeting, emphasizing the need to reinforce security cooperation with the United States and Japan, the presidential office said in a statement.

Yoon also ordered the military to thoroughly conduct ongoing military drills with the United States.

Yoon said South Korea's military must "thoroughly carry out the ongoing joint exercise of Freedom Shield while maintaining a firm South Korea-U.S. joint defense posture that can curb any threat from North Korea," the office said in a statement.

Earlier this week, South Korea and the U.S. began 11 days of Freedom Shield military drills, the biggest exercises between the two allies in years.

The NSC "strongly condemned North Korea's launch of a long-range ballistic missile as a clear violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and a grave provocation that heightens tensions on the Korean Peninsula and threatens regional peace."

South Korea's military said it detected the launch from the Sunan area in Pyongyang at 7:10 a.m., and the missile, fired at a lofted angle, flew some 1,000 kilometers before splashing into the sea.

kdh@yna.co.kr
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