S. Korea says North launched ICBM

Missile test follows vow to retaliate against U.S. military drills with South

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea launched what South Korea called an intercontinental ballistic missile off its east coast on Saturday, a day after vowing to take “unprecedentedly persistent and strong” counteractions against the joint military drills that the United States and South Korea plan for this spring.

The launch was the North’s first missile test since Jan. 1, when it fired a short-range ballistic missile, and its first ICBM test since Nov. 18, when it fired the Hwasong-17, the North’s most powerful long-range missile.

So far, all of the North’s ICBMs have been launched at a deliberately steep angle, so that they fly high into space rather than over Japan toward the Pacific. But flight data from the Hwasong-17 test indicated that if launched at a normal angle, the missile theoretically could reach the United States.

The South Korean military said the most recent ICBM was launched Saturday from near the international airport in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, and flew about 560 miles to the east. Because this missile, like previous ones, was fired at a lofted angle, it fell into waters west of the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, according to both Japanese and South Korean officials.

Japan’s defense minister, Yasukazu Hamada, told reporters that the North Korean missile had reached an altitude of roughly 3,540 miles. If fired at a normal ICBM trajectory, the missile could have traveled about 8,700 miles, enough to reach anywhere in the entire continental United States, he said.

The offices of President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan each called a meeting of their country’s National Security Council to discuss the situation.

“It’s deplorable that North Korea persists in nuclear and missile development while its people are dying of hunger amid severe food shortages,” Yoon’s office said in a statement. “Through its provocations, the North will gain nothing but harsh international sanctions.”

North Korea launched at least 95 ballistic and other missiles in 2022 — more than in any previous year — as its leader, Kim Jong Un, doubled down on expanding its nuclear arsenal after the collapse of negotiations in 2019 with then-President Donald Trump. The country tested several ICBMs last year, according to South Korean officials, although it called only two of them ICBMs.

On Saturday, South Korea condemned the launch as a “clear violation” of U.N. Security Council resolutions that ban the country from testing ballistic missiles and nuclear devices.

North Korea has defied them as Washington’s growing tensions with Russia and China left the Security Council split, ensuring that no new U.N. sanctions will be imposed for the military provocations.

With North Korea continuing its nuclear and missile brinkmanship, Washington and Seoul agreed to expand their annual military exercises this year to strengthen their combined deterrence against the North.

One such exercise, a tabletop drill, is scheduled for Wednesday at the Pentagon. Afterward, delegates from both sides are to visit an American naval base with nuclear submarines, as Washington seeks to reassure South Korea of its intention to defend it using all means, including nuclear, under the so-called extended deterrence doctrine.

The allies are also scheduled in mid-March to hold a large combined field exercise in South Korea.

North Korea denounces such drills as a rehearsal for invasion, and its Foreign Ministry warned on Friday that the joint drills would plunge the Korean Peninsula into a “grave vortex of escalating tension.”