Japan puts missile defences on alert as N Korea warns of satellite launch
Japan put its ballistic missile defences on alert on Monday and vowed to shoot down any projectile that threatens its territory, after North Korea notified it of a planned satellite launch between May 31 and June 11.
The nuclear-armed North says it has completed its first military spy satellite and leader Kim Jong Un has approved final preparations for the launch.
It would be the North’s latest step in a series of missile launches and weapons tests in recent months, including one of a new, solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile.
Tokyo expects North Korea to fire the rocket carrying its satellite over Japan’s southwest island chain as it did in 2016, a defence ministry spokesperson said.
Analysts say the new satellite is part of a surveillance technology programme that includes drones, aimed at improving the ability to strike targets in wartime.
“We will take destructive measures against ballistic and other missiles that are confirmed to land in our territory,” Japan’s defence ministry said in a statement.
Japan would use its Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) or Patriot Missile PAC-3 to destroy a North Korean missile, it added.
Any North Korean missile launch would be a serious violation of UN Security Council resolutions condemning its nuclear and missile activity, Japanese
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters.
“We strongly urge North Korea to refrain from launching,” his office said, adding that it would co-operate with the US, South Korea and other countries and do all it could to collect and analyse information from any launch.
South Korea joined Japan in calling on the reclusive North to scrap its plan, which it described as “illegal”.
“If North Korea presses ahead, it will pay the price and suffer,” a spokesperson of the South’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Kim Gunn, the South’s special envoy for peace and security affairs on the peninsula, held a three-way telephone call with his counterparts from Japan and the United States, the ministry added.
They agreed to work together closely in leading a united response by the international community to Pyongyang’s planned move, it said.