Seoul, South Korea
CNN
—
North Korea South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said it had launched a long-range ballistic missile on Saturday afternoon, a day after Pyongyang warned of “unprecedentedly strong reactions” if the United States and South Korea advanced. conduct planned military exercises.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the rocket landed inside Japanese exclusive economic zone west of the main island north of Hokkaido, condemned by the United States.
The Japanese Defense Ministry said the missile reached an altitude of 5,700 kilometers (3,541 miles) and flew about 900 kilometers (559 miles). The South Korean JCS said the missile was launched from the Sunan area of Pyongyang at around 5:22 p.m. local time.
Japanese officials said the missile flew for more than 60 minutes.
North Korea launched a missile last March with a slightly longer distance and flight time. That projectile is believed to be an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the first missile test since 2017.
In November, after another similar launch, Pyongyang announced ICBM “testing new type”called Hwasong-17.
Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada at the time said the missile was capable of reaching the US mainland. “The ICBM-class ballistic missile launched this time can have a range of more than 15,000 km when calculated based on the flight distance of this ICBM,” Hamada said in a statement. “It depends on the weight of the warhead, but in that case the continental United States will be included in the range.”
North Korea tested a missile at a very high orbit. If they were fired on a flatter trajectory, they would theoretically be able to reach the US mainland.
The US government described Saturday’s missile launch as “a flagrant violation of many United Nations Security Council resolutions,” according to a statement from a spokesman for the White House National Security Council. Adrienne Watson.
“While [the US Indo-Pacific Command] assessed that it did not pose an immediate threat to US personnel, territory or our allies, the launch would not necessarily increase tensions and potentially destabilize security situation in the region,” Mr. Watson said. “It just proves that the DPRK continues to prioritize its illegal weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs over the welfare of its people.”
Watson said the United States is calling on other countries to “condemn these violations and urge the DPRK to stop its destabilizing actions and engage in serious dialogue.”
Earlier this month, the Kim Jong Un regime introduced almost at least 11 advanced ICBMs at a nighttime military parade in Pyongyang in the largest-ever display of what its state media described as North Korea’s “nuclear strike capability”.
Those missiles appeared to be Hwasong-17s, analysts said.
Ankit Panda, a nuclear policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said on social media that if each missile in the parade was armed with multiple nuclear warheads, they could be enough. mass to overwhelm the US ballistic missile defense system.
Saturday’s test comes after North Korea’s foreign ministry on Friday criticized the United States and South Korea over their plans for upcoming military drills.
Washington and Seoul are expected to hold nuclear exercises next week at the Pentagon, South Korea’s defense ministry said on Friday. The allies are also expected to hold military exercises next month in the Korean Peninsula.
In the same statement, North Korea also said it would consider further military action if the UN Security Council continued to pressure Pyongyang “as the United States wants”.
In January, Kim Jong Un calls for “exponential increase in the country’s nuclear arsenal” and stressed the “necessity of mass production of tactical nuclear weapons,” according to the country’s state news agency KCNA.
According to the KCNA report, Kim called for the development of a new “intercontinental ballistic missile system” capable of rapid nuclear counterattack.
