Latest missile test a ‘challenge to the world’ NORTH KOREA

North Korea has fired another medium-range missile in its latest ballistics test.

The rocket was fired from an area near the North Korean county of Pukchang, in South Pyongan Province, and flew eastward about 500km, according to South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff. The US Pacific Command said it tracked the missile before it landed in the sea.

White House officials travelling in Saudi Arabia with President Donald Trump said the system, which was last tested in February, has a shorter range than the missiles launched in North Korea’s most recent tests.

An official from South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff said the missile appeared to be similar to a missile that North Korea fired in February, when it used a launcher truck to fire a solid-fuel missile that it calls the Pukguksong (Polaris)-2, a land-based version of a submarine-launched missile the country revealed earlier.

The February launch, the North’s first missile test after Mr Trump took office, alarmed neighbours because solid-fuel missiles can be fired more quickly than liquid-fuel missiles, which need to be fuelled before launch and require a larger number of vehicles, including fuel trucks, that could be spotted by satellites.

In Tokyo, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe called the launch a “challenge to the world” that tramples international efforts to resolve the North Korean nuclear and missile problems peacefully, and vowed to bring up the issue as the “main agenda” of this week’s G7 summit in Italy.

Under the watch of dictator Kim Jong Un, North Korea has been aggressively pursuing a decadeslong goal of putting a nuclear warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the US mainland.

This latest missile test comes just a couple of weeks after North Korea launched its ‘Hwasong-12’ rocket