North Korea fires missile over Japan
TOKYO (Reuters) — North Korea fired a ballistic missile over Japan’s northern Hokkaido island into the sea early yesterday, prompting warnings to residents to take cover and drawing a sharp reaction from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The test is one of the most provocative ever from the reclusive state. North Korea has conducted dozens of ballistic missile tests under young leader Kim Jong-un, the most recent on Saturday, but firing projectiles over mainland Japan is rare.
”North Korea’s reckless action is an unprecedented, serious and a grave threat to our nation,” Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters.
Abe said he spoke to US President Donald Trump yesterday and they agreed to increase pressure on North Korea. Trump also said the United States was “100 percent with Japan,” Abe told reporters.
South Korea’s military said the missile was launched from near the North Korean capital Pyongyang, just before 6 a.m. and flew 2,700 km, reaching an altitude of about 550 km.
Four South Korean fighter jets bombed a military firing range yesterday after President Moon Jae-in asked the military to demonstrate capabilities to counter North Korea.
South Korea and the United States had discussed deploying additional “strategic assets” on the Korean peninsula, the presidential Blue House said in a statement, without giving more details.
North Korea remained defiant.
”The US should know that it can neither browbeat the DPRK with any economic sanctions and military threats and blackmail nor make the DPRK flinch from the road chosen by itself,” North Korea’s official said yesterday, using the initials of the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Some experts said the test appeared to have been of a recently developed intermediate-range Hwasong-12 missile, but there was no clear consensus.
This month, North Korea threatened to fire four missiles into the sea near the US Pacific territory of Guam after Trump said it would face “fire and fury” if it threatened the United States.
”Alas, Pyongyang has demonstrated that its threats to the US base on Guam are not a bluff,” Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of Russia’s upper house of parliament’s international affairs committee, said on social media.
North Korea fired what it said was a rocket carrying a communications satellite into orbit over Japan in 2009 after warning of its plan.
The United States, Japan and South Korea considered it a ballistic missile test. Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said the latest missile fell into the sea 1,180 km east of Cape Erimo on Hokkaido.
The UN Security Council will meet this week to discuss the test, diplomats said.
This month, the 15-member Security Council unanimously imposed new sanctions on North Korea in response to two long-range missile launches in July.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson appeared to make a peace overture to North Korea last week, welcoming what he called the restraint it had shown by not conducting any tests since July.