Because North Korea’s (failed) launch raises the threat level

For experts it is more than a suspicion. The North Korean missile, which exploded in flight after flying for about 250 kilometres, could belong to the “family” of hypersonic missiles, launchers capable of traveling at five times the speed of light, designed to be maneuverable on unpredictable flight paths and fly at low altitude. Even if it failed, the test marks a further increase in the level of danger reached by the regime led by Kim Jong-un, stubbornly clinging to its military strengthening program. The previous missile launch took place on May 30th.
The alert level on (and around) the Korean Peninsula has never been higher. After coming one step away from an agreement on the denuclearization of the Peninsula with the then Stars and Stripes President Donald Trump, Kim Jong-un dismissed the conciliatory attitudes, intensifying “the fiery rhetoric and demolishing the long-standing policy aimed at reunification peaceful with South Korea.”
The dictator is moving in an increasingly unscrupulous manner. The alliance with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, signed a few days ago, gives Pyongyang unprecedented political and military room for maneuver, giving new life to an aggressive military policy that has never been interrupted. In 2022, the country launched more than 90 missiles, the highest number since Kim came to power. In 2023, North Korea launched the solid-fueled Hwasong-18 missile for the first time.

Not only. Today’s launch came after the North criticized the arrival of the US aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in South Korea and warned it would take “new and overwhelming” deterrent measures against what it called a “provocative” act. The aircraft carrier arrived in Busan, 320 kilometers southeast of Seoul, on Saturday to participate in a trilateral exercise with South Korea and Japan.
President Yoon Suk Yeol boarded the aircraft carrier on Tuesday, saying the visit symbolizes the United States’ “firm” security commitment to South Korea and that trilateral cooperation between South Korea, the United States and Japan will become a another “powerful” deterrent against the North.

Seoul, as written by Korea Times, “is also intensifying exercises to strengthen deterrence against North Korea’s provocations.” It was the first live-fire drill in the region in nearly seven years, following Seoul’s decision earlier this month to suspend the 2018 inter-Korean military agreement. South Korean troops fired more than 290 rounds into offshore waters of the northwestern islands of Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong. “The Marine Corps is ready to fight the enemy at a moment’s notice. If the enemy provokes us, we will respond immediately, firmly and to the end,” a South Korean military officer said.
Since late last month, North Korea is estimated to have launched more than 2,000 trash-filled balloons in an “eye for an eye” move against anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets sent by North Korean defectors and activists in the South.