NKorea fires missile as US, SKorea prepare for military exercises

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea on Saturday fired a long-range missile from its capital into the sea off Japan, according to its neighbors, a day after it threatened to take strong measures against South Korea and the U.S. over their joint military exercises.

According to the South Korean and Japanese militaries, the missile was fired on a high angle, apparently to avoid reaching the neighbors’ territories, and traveled about 560 miles at a maximum altitude of 3,500 miles during an hourlong flight.

The details were similar to North Korea’s Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile test flight in November, which experts said demonstrated potential to reach the U.S. mainland if fired on a normal trajectory.

Japanese government spokesperson Hirokazu Matsuno said the missile landed within Japan’s exclusive economic zone, about 125 miles west of Oshima island off the western coast of the northernmost main island of Hokkaido.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry on Friday threatened “unprecedently” strong action against its rivals after South Korea announced a series of military exercises with the United States aimed at sharpening their response to the North’s growing threats.

North Korea’s missile tests have been punctuated by threats of preemptive nuclear attacks against South Korea or the United States over what it perceives as a broad range of scenarios that put its leadership under threat.

The North Korean statement on Friday accused Washington and Seoul of planning more than 20 rounds of military drills this year, including large-scale field exercises, and described its rivals as “the arch-criminals deliberately disrupting regional peace and stability.”

South Korea’s Defense Ministry officials told lawmakers earlier that Seoul and Washington will hold an annual computer-simulated combined training in mid-March. The 11-day training will reflect North Korea’s nuclear threats, as well as unspecified lessons from the Russia-Ukraine war, according to Heo Tae-keun, South Korea’s deputy minister of national defense policy. Heo said the countries will also conduct joint field exercises in mid-March that would be bigger than those held in the past few years.