N Korea fires ICBM, missiles hours after US prez leaves Asia
SEOUL: North Korea fired a volley of missiles early on Wednesday including a suspected intercontinental ballistic missile ( ICBM), just hours after US President Joe Biden left Asia after a trip overshadowed by Pyongyang’s sabre-rattling.
Three missiles - including one suspected ICBM - were fired from the Sunan area in Pyongyang, Seoul said, where an airfield has become a key site used in multiple recent weapons tests by the nuclear-armed regime.
The launch, one of nearly 20 weapons tests by Pyongyang so far this year, prompted joint US-South Korea live fire missile drills in response, as both sides slammed what they called continued “provocations” by the nuclear-armed state.
The tests are “an illegal act in direct violation of UN Security Council resolutions”, Seoul’s government said after a National Security Council meeting chaired by new President Yoon Suk-yeol.
The United States condemned the “destabilising” launches, and called for Pyongyang to “engage in sustained and substantive dialogue”, a state department spokesman said.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that it had “detected at around 6am local time, 6:37am and 6:42am the firings of ballistic missiles launched from Sunan area towards the East Sea”, it said, referring to the Sea of Japan.
“The first ballistic missile (suspected ICBM) had a range of around 360 kilometres and an altitude of around 540km,” Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
The second ballistic missile “disappeared at an altitude of 20km” and the third - a suspected short range ballistic missile - travelled around 760km at an altitude of around 60km.
The tests were “clearly timed for President Biden’s return after his visit to South Korea and Japan,” Park Won-gon, a professor at Ewha University said, adding that Biden hadn’t even touched down in the US.