North Korea launches missile over Japan
North Korea fired what is believed to have been an intermediate range ballistic missile over northern Japan around 7am local time this morning.
The missile, which was launched from close to Pyongyang, flew over Japan’s most northerly island of Hokkaido before falling into the Pacific Ocean. It followed a similar route to the Hwasong-12 ballistic missile North Korea launched on Aug 29, travelling about 2,300 miles.
NORTH Korea fired what was believed to be an intermediate range ballistic missile over northern Japan shortly before 7am local time this morning.
The missile, which was launched from close to Pyongyang, flew over Japan’s most northerly island of Hokkaido before falling into the Pacific Ocean. Early estimates of the weapon’s trajectory suggest that it reached a maximum altitude of around 480 miles and travelled approximately 2,300 miles before hitting the sea.
The weapon followed a similar route to the Hwasong-12 ballistic missile that North Korea fired on Aug 29 and, once again, the J-alert system issued warnings through mobile phones and radios to people across northern Japan.
The Pentagon said it believed it was an intermediate range ballistic missile.
Residents of half the country were told to “shelter in place” within moments of the launch being detected and television coverage showed a map with districts that were potentially beneath the flight path flashing in yellow.
It does not appear that the Japanese or US militaries attempted to intercept the missile.
Moon Jae-in, the South Korean president, immediately convened a meeting of the National Security Council, while troops on the east coast of the peninsula responded with exercises designed to counteract the launch of a ballistic missile towards South Korea.
The launch comes just four days after the UN Security Council imposed new sanctions on North Korea, limiting the amount of fuel that the regime can import and banning its lucrative exports of textile products and labourers.
The sanctions were announced a day after the North carried out its largest ever underground nuclear test.
The international community’s condemnation of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes appears to have had little impact, with Pyongyang yesterday describing the UN as a “tool of evil” in the control of Washington.
A statement by The Korea Asia-pacific Peace Committee said the US should be “beaten to death like a rabid dog” while Japan “should be sunk into the sea by the nuclear bomb of Juche”. Juche is North Korea’s philosophy of self-reliance that has been the regime’s watchword since the founding of the nation by Kim Il-sung, the grandfather of Kim Jong-un, the current dictator.
There are also concerns that the North is preparing to carry out another underground nuclear test.
The launch, the North’s 12th missile test so far this year, also comes just hours after Washington announced that President Donald Trump will visit Japan, South Korea and China in October. North Korea and regional security will inevitably be high on the list of issues to be discussed.
Despite the new sanctions, Japan is likely to call on the international community to do more to isolate Pyongyang, perhaps by further reducing the amount of fuel North Korea is able to purchase. There are suggestions Pyongyang is stockpiling reserves of fuel and rationing oil available to the general public, with priority being given to its armed forces.