North Korea launches powerful weapon

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA » After 2 ½ months of relative peace, North Korea launched its most powerful weapon yet early Wednesday, a presumed intercontinental ballistic missile that could put Washington and the entire eastern U.S. seaboard within range.

Resuming its torrid testing pace in pursuit of its goal of a viable arsenal of nuclear-tipped missiles that can hit the U.S. mainland had been widely expected, but the apparent power and suddenness of the new test still jolted the Korean Peninsula and Washington. The launch at 3:17 a.m. local time and midday in the U.S. capital indicated an effort to perfect the element of surprise and to obtain maximum attention in the United States.

The firing is a clear message of defiance aimed at the Trump administration, which had just restored the North to a U.S. list of terror sponsors. It also ruins nascent diplomatic efforts, raises fears of war or a pre-emptive U.S. strike and casts a deeper shadow over the security of the Winter Olympics early next year in South Korea.

A rattled Seoul responded by almost immediately launching three of its own missiles in a show of force. The South’s president, Moon Jae-in, expressed worry that North Korea’s growing missile threat could force the United States to attack the North before it masters a nuclear-tipped longrange missile, something experts say may be imminent.

“If North Korea completes a ballistic missile that could reach from one continent to another, the situation can spiral out of control,” Moon said at an emergency meeting in Seoul, according to his office. “We must stop a situation where North Korea miscalculates and threatens us with nuclear weapons or where the United States considers a preemptive strike.”

Moon, a liberal who has been forced into a more hawkish stance by a stream of North Korean weapons tests, has repeatedly declared that there can be no U.S. attack on the North without Seoul’s approval, but many here worry that Washington may act without South Korean input.

The launch is North Korea’s first since it fired an intermediate-range missile over Japan on Sept. 15, and may have broken any efforts at diplomacy meant to end the North’s nuclear ambitions. U.S. officials have sporadically floated the idea of direct talks with North Korea if it maintained restraint.

The missile also appears to improve on North Korea’s past launches. If flown on a standard trajectory, instead of Wednesday’s lofted angle, the missile would have a range of more than 8,100 miles, said U.S. scientist David Wright, a physicist who closely tracks North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs. “Such a missile would have more than enough range to reach Washington, D.C., and in fact any part of the continental United States,” Wright wrote in a blog post for the Union for Concerned Scientists.

Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera said the missile landed inside of Japan’s special economic zone in the Sea of Japan, about 155 miles west of Aomori, which is on the northern part of Japan’s main island of Honshu.

Onodera says the missile could have been an upgraded version of North Korea’s Hwasong-14 ICBM or a new missile. A big unknown is the missile’s payload. If it carried a light mock warhead, then its effective range would have been shorter, analysts said.

LEE JIN-MAN — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A man watches a TV screen showing a local news program reporting North Korea’s missile launch Wednesday at the Seoul Train Station in Seoul, South Korea. North Korea abruptly ended a 10-week pause in its weapons testing.