Fury after North Korea’s fresh missile test

FEARS were growing last night that North Korea has developed a new kind of missile after Kim Jong-un’s regime conducted a weapons test yesterday.

A rocket reached an altitude of 1,240miles and flew for 500 miles before landing in the Sea of Japan near the Russian coast.

But experts said the missile could have travelled for 2, 00 miles if flown on a lower trajectory – putting the US territory Guam in the Western Pacific within range.

David Wright, a physicist and missile expert, yesterday said that the missile has ‘considerably longer range’ than North Korea’s current weapons. He said it may have been a new mobile, two-stage liq- uid-fuelled missile which North Korea displayed in a military parade last month.

North Korea is thought to be trying to miniaturise nuclear warheads and fit them on missiles that can reach the US.

The test – Pyongyang’s tenth this year despite UN sanctions – was swiftly condemned by world leaders, including US president Donald Trump. A White House spokesman said: ‘With the missile impacting so close to Russian soil — in fact, closer to Russia than Japan — the president cannot imagine that Russia is pleased. North Korea has been a flagrant menace for far too long. Let this latest provocation serve as a call for all nations to implement far stronger sanctions.’

A US source said the missile landed 60 miles south of Russia’s Vladivostok region, but the Russian defence ministry said it had landed 310 miles off the coast.

US Pacific Command stated that ‘the flight is not consistent with an intercontinental ballistic missile’, a weapon capable of reaching mainland America.

The launch is a direct challenge to the new South Korean president Moon Jae-in and may jeopardise his willingness for dialogue with the North. ‘The president expressed deep regret over the fact that this reckless provocation ... occurred just days after a new government was launched in South Korea,’ senior presidential secretary Yoon Young-chan said.

The launch took place as troops from the US, Japan and Europe gather near Guam for military drills. The USS Carl Vinson, an aircraft supercarrier, is also engaging in war games with South Korean navy ships off the Korean Peninsula.

Meanwhile a Kremlin spokesman said the ‘missile launch posed no danger to the Russian Federation’.

But a spokesman for Vladimir Putin said the Russian president had expressed concerns about the launch.