N. Korea: ICBM test is ‘stronger warning’

Blames U.S., S. Korea for raising instability

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Friday that its latest intercontinental ballistic missile launch was intended to send a “stronger warning” over combined U.S. military exercises with South Korea, blaming those for creating a “most unstable security environment” in the region.

Thursday’s launch from North Korea’s capital area came hours before South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol traveled to Tokyo for a summit with Japanese Prime Minster Fumio Kishida. The meeting underscored Seoul’s urgency to tighten security cooperation with a fellow U.S. ally in the face of North Korean nuclear threats.

The ICBM launch was North Korea’s fourth missile event in about a week as it ratcheted up a tit-fortat response to U.s.-south Korean military drills, the biggest of their kind in years, which began Monday and run through March 23.

North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said leader Kim Jong Un supervised the test-firing of the Hwasong-17 ICBM from Pyongyang’s international airport and stressed the need to “strike fear into the enemies” over what it called the “open hostility” shown to the North by the largescale exercises.

Launched at a high angle to avoid the territory of North

Korea’s neighbors, the missile reached an maximum altitude of 3,756 miles and traveled 621 miles before landing in waters off the country’s eastern coast, the KCNA said.

The South Korean and Japanese militaries had released similar flight details, which indicate the missile had a potential range to reach the U.S. mainland.