Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
South Korea says North has fired another missile
2,300-mile flight said to go over Japan, end in ocean
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s military said North Korea fired an unidentified missile today from its capital, Pyongyang, and that it flew over Japan before landing in the northern Pacific Ocean.
It was the second testflight over the territory of the close U.S. ally in less than a month, and it followed the sixth and most powerful nuclear test by North Korea to date on Sept. 3.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile traveled about 2,300 miles while reaching a maximum height of 478 miles.
The missile was launched from Sunan, the site of Pyongyang’s international airport.
North Korea last month used the airport to fire a Hwasong- 12 intermediate-range missile that flew over northern Japan.
The North at the time declared it a “meaningful prelude” to containing the U.S. Pacific island territory of Guam and the start of more ballistic missile launches
toward the Pacific Ocean.
South Korean experts said the August launch was Pyongyang’s attempt to make missiles flying over Japan an accepted norm as it seeks to test new projectiles and win more military space in the region dominated by its enemies.
The Off ices of Guam Homeland Security and Civil Defense said the latest launch posed no immediate threat to Guam or the Marinas.
South Korea’s Defense Ministry said the country’s military conducted a live-fire drill of a Hyunmoo-2 ballistic missile in response to the North’s launch today.
Seoul’s presidential office said President Moon Jae-in has scheduled a National Security Council meeting to discuss the latest launch.
North Korea claimed its latest nuclear test was a detonation of a thermonuclear weapon built for its development of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The North flight- tested its Hwasong-14 ICBMs twice in July, and analysts say the missiles potentially will reach deep into the U.S. mainland when perfected.
North Korea’s latest missile launch came days after the U. N. Security Council unanimously approved new sanctions over the nuclear test.
The Trump administration had sought an embargo on oil imports to North Korea. But opposition from China and Russia forced the U.N. to approve weaker measures, although it did ban textile exports, an important source of its revenue for the North. The latest sanctions are not as tough as what the U.S. had sought, but they are expected to have a significant impact.
Hours before the North’s latest launch, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Thursday urged China to use its leverage as North Korea’s principal supplier of oil to press the isolated nation into reconsidering its development of nuclear weapons.
Tillerson said it was going to be “very difficult” to get China to consent to an embargo against its neighbor, but he still urged China as a “great country and a world power” to use its leverage as the supplier of virtually all North Korea’s oil.
“That is a very powerful tool, and it has been used in the past,” Tillerson said at a news conference. “We hope China will not reject that.”
He spoke after talks with Britain and France on how to increase pressure on the authoritarian government of Kim Jong Un.
China opposes North Korea’s nuclear weapons development but worries that greater economic pressure on the North could trigger a collapse. It wants the U.S. to restart long-stalled negotiations with North Korea.
“The Chinese have done more perhaps than we thought that they would, but there is scope for them to do much, much more, particularly in respect to oil,” said Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson of Britain, another permanent member of the Security Council.
Elsewhere, the European Union on Thursday announced it was bringing its regulations in line with the North Korea sanctions approved by the Security Council in August. Those bar North Korea from exporting coal, iron, lead and seafood products estimated to be worth over $1 billion.