Seoul, South Korea
CNN
—
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff announced that North Korea launched what was presumed to be a long-range ballistic missile on Saturday afternoon.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the missile landed inside Japan’s exclusive economic zone north of the main island of Hokkaido, prompting condemnation from the United States.
Japan’s defense ministry said the missile reached an altitude of 5,700 kilometers (3,541 miles) and flew a distance of about 900 kilometers (559 miles). It was launched from the Sunan area of Pyongyang around 5:22 p.m. local time on Saturday, according to South Korea’s JCS.
Japanese officials said the missile flew for more than 60 minutes.
In March last year, North Korea launched a missile with a slightly longer range and longer duration. The projectile is believed to be an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the first test of such a missile since 2017.
In November, after another similar launch, Pyongyang announced: ‘New Kind of Test Launch’ Intercontinental Ballistic Missileit was called Mars-17.
Defense Minister Hamada said at the time that it could reach the US mainland. “The ICBM-class ballistic missile launched this time could have a range of more than 15,000 km, calculated based on the flight range of this ICBM,” Hamada said in a statement. “Depending on the weight of the warhead, that would include the continental United States.”
North Korea is testing a missile in a highly lofted trajectory. If launched on a flatter trajectory, it theoretically has the ability to reach the continental United States.
The US government called Saturday’s missile launch a “serious violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions,” according to a statement by White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrian Watson.
“in the meantime [the US Indo-Pacific Command] If we determine that it poses no immediate threat to U.S. personnel, territory or allies, this launch unnecessarily escalates tensions and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region,” Watson said. . “It just shows that North Korea continues to put its illegal weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs ahead of the welfare of its own people.”
Watson said the United States is urging other countries to “condemn these violations and call on North Korea to end its destabilizing actions and engage in serious dialogue.”
Earlier this month, the Kim Jong-un regime unveiled at least nearly 11 advanced ICBMs at a nighttime military parade in Pyongyang in the biggest display of what state media described as North Korea’s “nuclear strike capability.”
Analysts said these missiles look like the Hwasong-17.
Ankit Panda, a nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said on social media that if each missile in the parade were equipped with multiple nuclear warheads, it would be enough to overwhelm US ballistic missile defenses. said it could become
Saturday’s test came after North Korea’s foreign ministry on Friday accused the United States and South Korea of planning upcoming military exercises.
Washington and Seoul are scheduled to hold a nuclear tabletop exercise at the Pentagon next week, South Korea’s defense ministry said Friday. The allies also plan to hold military exercises on the Korean Peninsula next month.
In the same statement, North Korea said it would consider additional military action if the UN Security Council continued to pressure North Korea “as the United States wishes.”
In January, Kim Jong Un called for an “exponential increase in the country’s nuclear arsenal” and emphasized the “need for mass production of tactical nuclear weapons,” according to state media KCNA.
KCNA reported that Kim had called for the development of a new “intercontinental ballistic missile system” capable of a rapid nuclear counterattack.
