Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
N. Korea missile flies high and far
‘Will handle’ it, Trump declares
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile early today for the first time in four months, defying President Donald Trump’s warnings to halt its weapons program.
Trump’s reaction to the launch was more muted than in the past, when he lobbed insults at the North’s leader, Kim Jong Un, and threatened “fire and fury” that would “totally destroy” the North.
“We will take care of it,” he told reporters in Washington. “It is a situation that we will handle.”
The missile took off from around Pyongsong, a town northeast of Pyongyang, the capital, at 3:17 a.m. and flew east for about 53 minutes before landing off the north of Honshu, Japan’s largest island, nearly 600 miles from the launch site.
The missile was fired high into the air, reaching a maximum altitude of about 2,800 miles, in an arc similar to the North’s two previous intercontinental ballistic missiles, which were launched in July. The missile was the first since the North fired an intermediate-range missile over Japan on Sept. 15.
The distance traveled appeared to be significantly greater than that of the two previous ICBMs, which flew for 37 minutes on July 4 and for 47 minutes on July 28.
Six minutes after the launch, South Korea conducted its own missile test off its east coast, demonstrating its ability to strike North Korean missile launching sites, the South’s military said in a statement. Earlier Tuesday, the South had warned that the North had been conducting engine and fuel tests in recent weeks, with the goal of achieving nuclear-tipped
intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities as early as next year.
The Japanese government also had recorded signs of an imminent test, with Kyodo News reporting Monday that radio signals suggested that the North was preparing for a ballistic missile launch.
The U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting for this afternoon at the request of Japan, the U.S. and South Korea.
A week ago, the Trump administration declared North Korea a state sponsor of terrorism, further straining ties between governments that are still technically at war. Washington also imposed new sanctions on North Korean shippers and Chinese trading companies dealing with the North.
North Korea called the terror designation a “serious provocation” that justifies its development of nuclear weapons.
David Wright, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the missile performed better than the two fired in July, with a potential range of more than 8,000 miles, able to reach Washington or any other part of the continental United States.
“It’s pretty impressive,” Wright said of the test flight. “This is building on what they’ve done before. It’s muscle-flexing to show the U.S. that they’re going to continue to make progress.”
However, Wright noted that in an effort to increase the missile’s range, the North Koreans might have fitted it with a mock payload that weighed little or next to nothing. So the distance traveled, while impressive, does not necessarily translate into a working intercontinental ballistic missile, much less one that could deliver a thermonuclear warhead.
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, said the new launch appeared to be the “most robust” ICBM test yet by North Korea.
“Early calculations suggest that it could reach the East Coast of the United States,” he said. “However, that doesn’t take into account the payload mass, which could limit the range.”
North Korea is searching for ways to get around the United States’ ability to carry out a pre-emptive nuclear strike, and the latest launch — occurring in the middle of the night with no advance notice — showed that Pyongyang may be making strides, experts said.
Aerial photographs of North Korean launch sites didn’t show any missiles waiting on launchpads to be fueled, although Japanese officials had reported that radio telemetry pointed to a possible launch.
Rodger Baker, a vice president of strategic analysis with Stratfor, a geopolitical risk analysis company, said in an interview that in the past North Korea went through a lengthier process of rolling a missile onto a launchpad, filling it with liquid fuel and then launching it — steps that could take days.
To shorten that time frame, Pyongyang is now fueling missiles horizontally, before they are placed on the launchpad.
“This shortens the time from when they become visible to when they go in the air, and makes it less likely that the U.S. will be able to strike before it launches,” Baker said. “If you’re going to use this as a deterrent, which is its purpose, then you need a system that you’re able to utilize that the U.S. can’t counter.”
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a statement that North Korea was “indiscriminately threatening its neighbors, the region and global stability,” but that “diplomatic options remain viable and open, for now.”
He urged the international community to not only implement existing U.N. sanctions on North Korea but also to consider additional measures for interdicting maritime traffic transporting goods to and from the country.
President Moon Jae-in of South Korea and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan called meetings of their national security councils to discuss the North’s latest provocation. Trump spoke with Abe by phone later Tuesday, a White House spokesman said.
Japan’s chief Cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, told reporters that if North Korea does not resolve issues pertaining to its nuclear weapons policy, “there will be no bright future for North Korea.”
Unlike in previous launches over the summer, when the missiles flew over Japan’s northern island, Hokkaido, the government did not issue cellphone alerts to warn citizens.
Nighttime launches are not common, but North Korea has conducted night missile tests before. It launched an intercontinental ballistic missile at night July 28.
A spokesman for the Defense Department, Col. Robert Manning of the Army, said today’s launch “did not pose a threat to North America, our territories or our allies,” but added that the U.S. commitment to the defense of South Korea and Japan “remains ironclad.”
North Korea has persisted in its nuclear weapons and missile development despite nine rounds of sanctions that the Security Council has imposed since its first nuclear test in 2006. This year, the North has increased the frequency and daring of its missile tests, sending two missiles over Japan in August and September, while demonstrating technical progress that suggested it had developed the ability to strike the continental United States.
After a Sept. 3 underground nuclear test — the sixth by North Korea — the United Nations Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions against the country.
In the nearly three months since that test, as leaders of North Korea and the United States have exchanged insults, the world has braced for another show of force by the North.
Trump warned that if North Korea threatened the United States or its allies, Washington would have “no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” and he mockingly referred to Kim as “rocket man.”
Kim responded by calling Trump “a mentally deranged U.S. dotard,” and his foreign minister later warned that Kim could order the test of a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific.
Washington is applying what it calls “maximum pressure and sanctions” to stop North Korea from reaching the stage where it would be able to deliver a nuclear warhead on its ICBMs. But Kim says his country will conduct more missile tests in the Pacific Ocean to hone its capabilities.