South Korea’s military said it had fired missiles from ground, sea and air in response to North Korea’s launch of a new intercontinental ballistic missile on Thursday in Japan.
Pyongyang has launched nearly a dozen weapon tests this year in an unprecedented spree in defiance of UN sanctions.
But long-range and nuclear tests such as the one conducted on Thursday have been paused since leader Kim Jong Un met then-US president Donald Trump for a bout of doomed diplomacy, which collapsed in 2019.
South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in said in a statement that, “Thursday’s launch was a breach of the suspension of intercontinental ballistic missile launches promised by Chairman Kim Jong Un to the international community.
“It poses a serious threat to the Korean peninsula, the region and the international community,” Moon said, adding that it was a “clear violation” of UN Security Council resolutions.
The missile was fired on Thursday afternoon from Sunan – likely the same site as a failed test last week – and had a range of 6,200km, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
The missile flew for 71 minutes and landed in Japan’s territorial waters, according to the Japanese government.
“This is such an outrageous, unforgivable act,” Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said in Brussels where he was due to meet with members of the Group of Seven.
North Korea was threatening “the peace and safety of Japan, the region and the international community,” he added.
“This cannot be accepted.”
Nuclear-armed North Korea has long coveted an ICBM that can carry multiple warheads and, the US and South Korea say, has been testing the Hwasong-17, a giant ICBM first unveiled in October 2020.
Despite biting international sanctions over its weapons programs, Pyongyang has doubled-down on Kim’s drive to modernize the military, and last week test-fired what analysts said was likely the Hwasong-17.
That launch ended in failure, exploding mid-air in the skies above the capital.
“Pyongyang attempted to fire an ICBM at the Sunan airport last week but failed,” said Go Myong-hyun, senior researcher at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies.
“So it carried out today’s launch to make up for that failure and because it has to complete the ICBM technology right away,” he told AFP.
