Warning on threat from North Korea missile tests

Japan’s defence minister has declared that North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities have grown to an “unprecedented, critical and imminent” level that required “different responses” to the threat.

Itsunori Onodera said this rising threat had compelled his country to endorse the American view that all options must be considered, which US president Donald Trump says includes possible military action.

Japan has been left alarmed by North Korea twice launching missiles over Japanese territory in August and September.

Mr Onodera’s comments, made through an interpreter, came at the outset of a so-called trilateral meeting in the Philippines with US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis and South Korea’s defence minister Song Young-moo.

Mr Onodera said North Korea’s most recent underground nuclear test could have been a hydrogen bomb, which is vastly more powerful than an atomic bomb.