N. Korea launches missile over Japanese island, S. Korea says

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea fired another missile over the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido on Friday morning, just a day after Pyongyang threatened that the four main Japanese islands “should be sunken into the sea” by its nuclear bomb.

It was the second testflight over the territory of the U.S. ally in less than a month and sparked angry reactions in Tokyo and Seoul.

The missile was launched from the Sunan airfield just north of Pyongyang at about 6:30 a.m. local time, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

The missile flew 2,300 miles, passing over Hokkaido, and reaching a maximum height of 478 miles, South Korea said.

The launch triggered emergency alerts in Japan, with text messages and loud speakers telling residents on the missile’s potential flight path to seek shelter.

The Japanese government warned people not to approach any debris or other suspicious-looking material, a reflection that North Korean missiles sometimes break up in flight.

Friday’s launch appeared similar to an Aug. 29 launch.

North Korea fired a Hwasong-12 — an intermediate-range ballistic missile technically capable of flying 3,000 miles, enough to reach the U.S. territory of Guam — from the Sunan airfield.

It flew to the east, over Hokkaido and into the Pacific Ocean, rather than on a southward path toward Guam.

But analysts said that, after testing its missiles by firing them straight up and having them crash into the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, North Korea was apparently testing its flight on a normal trajectory without crossing a “red line” of aiming at the United States.