North Korea launches suspected long-range missile

Pyongyang has expressed outrage toward US in recent days; its most-recent missile test occurred on June 15.

Japanese television tracks the missile’s suspected path on Wednesday. Picture: AFP

North Korea tested what appeared to be a long-range missile on Wednesday, only days after the Kim Jong-un regime threatened to shoot down US spy planes that violated its airspace.

South Korea called it a suspected long-range missile, while Japan’s assessment described it as being of a similar class to an intercontinental ballistic missile.

North Korea’s prior ICBM launches have demonstrated a potential range long enough to reach the US mainland.

The missile was fired at around 10am from the Pyongyang area toward the North’s east coast, Seoul’s military said. It travelled almost 1000km and reached an altitude of more than 595km before splashing into the waters between the Korean peninsula and Japan, South Korean and Japanese officials said. The missile stayed airborne for 74 minutes, Japan’s Defence Ministry said. North Korea’s previous ICBM launches had similar flight times.

In recent days, North Korea’s foreign ministry and top officials have aired grievances against the US. Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of Kim Jong-un, claimed an American spy plane had entered North Korea’s self-proclaimed exclusive economic zone on Monday. A spokesperson for the North Korean Ministry of National Defence said the US had “intensified espionage activities beyond the wartime level”, citing “provocative” spy plane flights over eight straight days this month.

“There is no guarantee that such shocking accident as downing of the US Air Force strategic reconnaissance plane will not happen in the East Sea of Korea,” the spokesperson told KCNA.

On Wednesday, North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui denounced the Biden administration’s decision to provide cluster munitions to Ukraine, calling it a “dangerous criminal act”.

An unnamed spokesperson for North Korea’s military earlier this week took offence at plans for a US nuclear-armed submarine to make a port visit to South Korea for the first time in four decades.

Lee Sung-yoon, a Korea expert at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, said North Korea could be winding up for an even grander type of weapons test, such as exploding a nuclear warhead over the Pacific Ocean. Pyongyang has floated the possibility of engaging in such a test before. This latest suspected long-range missile launch could be a precursor to such a move, Professor Lee said.

“North Korea excels in pretextual provocations – that is, resorting to illegal and menacing be­haviour while blaming the US or South Korean actions or statements as the pretext for its kinetic ‘protest’,” he said.

“Pyongyang is gearing up for a major provocation.”

The latest North Korean missile launch came as US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley met with his South Korean and Japanese counterparts at US Indo-Pacific Command’s headquarters in Hawaii, on Tuesday. General Milley will next travel to Tokyo then Seoul this week.

“This is a brazen violation of multiple unanimous UN Security Council resolutions,” said Dave Butler, a spokesman for General Milley, referring to the launch. The US and its allies are “working through multiple bilateral and trilateral response options”, according to a senior military official.

The Kim regime has conducted roughly a dozen weapons tests this year, including a botched spy-­satellite launch and tests of an ICBM and what it claimed to be underwater cruise missiles. North Korea’s most-recent ballistic-missile test occurred on June 15.

State media didn’t immediately comment on Wednesday’s launch, though reporting on such tests lags a day behind.

The April launch of an ICBM used a solid-fuel engine, which can potentially allow North Korea to deploy the weapon more quickly and with more stealth, missile experts say.

That test featured what North Korea referred to as a next-generation ICBM called Hwasong-18.

In recent years, North Korea has conducted a historic number of weapons tests. United Nations Security Council resolutions bar Pyongyang from such behaviour. But the Kim regime enjoys a degree of protection from additional punitive measures due to veto powers held at the UN Security Council by close allies Russia and China. North Korea has sought to tighten bonds with both countries over the past year.

The Wall Street Journal