North Korea fires another missile over Japan

Launch comes just day after Pyongyang threatened to sink the country ‘into the sea’

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA— North Korea fired another missile over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido Friday morning, just a day after Pyongyang threatened that the four main Japanese islands “should be sunken into the sea” by its nuclear bomb.

This was the second time in less than three weeks that North Korea had sent a missile over Japan, and immediately sparked angry reactions in Tokyo and Seoul.

The missile was launched from the Sunan airfield just north of Pyongyang at about 6:30 a.m. local time, South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said.

It flew for 17 minutes, passing over Hokkaido and landing some 1,900 kilometres to the east, crashing into the Pacific Ocean.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is calling on all nations to take new measures against Kim Jong Un’s regime after North Korea’s latest missile launch.

He said Friday that UN Security Council resolutions approved earlier this week “represent the floor, not the ceiling, of the actions we should take.”

South Korean President Moon Jaein has instructed officials there to pursue “stern” diplomatic and military measures to discourage North Korea from further provocations after its latest missile launch.

Friday’s launch immediately trig- gered emergency alerts in Japan, with text messages and loud speakers telling residents on the missile’s potential flight path to seek shelter.

The Japanese government warned people not to approach any debris or other suspicious-looking material, a reflection of the fact that North Korean missiles sometimes break up in flight.

The Japanese chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, condemned the latest launch and reiterated that Japan would “not tolerate” North Korea’s actions.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had asked his government to “prepare for any contingency” but Japan did not try to shoot down the missile.

In Washington, the White House said President Donald Trump was briefed on the latest North Korean missile launch by his chief of staff, John Kelly. Details are still emerging, but Friday’s launch appeared very similar to the last launch, on Aug. 29.

On that day, North Korea fired an Hwasong-12 — an intermediaterange ballistic missile technically capable of flying 4,800 kilometres, enough to reach the U.S. territory of Guam — from the Sunan airfield. It flew to the east, over Hokkaido and into the Pacific Ocean, rather than on a southward path toward Guam.

On Thursday, a North Korean state agency had issued an alarming threat to Japan.

“The four islands of the (Japanese) archipelago should be sunken into the sea by (our) nuclear bomb,” the Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee said in a statement carried by the official news agency.

Hokkaido is the northernmost of Japan’s four main islands.

“Japan is no longer needed to exist near us,” the committee said.

The Japanese government estimates that the force of the Aug. 29 nuclear explosion was160 kilotons — more than 10 times the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima — but some analysts have said it could have been as big as 250 kilotons.

Air force Gen. John Hyten, the chief of U.S. Strategic Command, agreed with the assessment that North Korea had probably tested a hydrogen bomb.

Speaking just before the missile was launched, Hyten, who oversees U.S. nuclear forces and monitors North Korea, told reporters that the size, yield and other indications seen in North Korea’s most recent nuclear test “equates to a hydrogen bomb” and that he must now assume Pyongyang can build one.