By John Ikani
North Korea has fired a suspected intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) towards the sea off its east coast, South Korea and Japan’s militaries said, in what would be the first such test of the isolated state’s largest missiles in nearly five years.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said the missile was believed to be a new kind of ICBM, and condemned the test as an “unforgivable outrage.”
“These series of actions taken by North Korea threaten the peace and security of our country, the region and the international community, and they are absolutely unacceptable,” he said from Brussels, where he landed Thursday to meet with world leaders on the crisis in Ukraine.
The missile was fired on Thursday afternoon from Sunan — likely the same site as a failed test last week — and had a range of 6,200 kilometers (3,850 miles), Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
The missile flew for 71 minutes and landed in Japan’s territorial waters, according to the Japanese government.
But long-range and nuclear tests such as the one conducted on Thursday have been paused since leader Kim Jong Un met then-US President Donald Trump for a bout of doomed diplomacy, which collapsed in 2019.
Thursday’s launch was a “breach of the suspension of intercontinental ballistic missile launches promised by Chairman Kim Jong Un to the international community,” South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in said in a statement.
“It poses a serious threat to the Korean peninsula, the region and the international community,” Moon said, adding that it was a “clear violation” of UN Security Council resolutions.
The United States, meanwhile, called the launch “a brazen violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions” that “needlessly raises tensions and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region”, according to a White House statement.
On March 16, North Korea launched a suspected missile that appeared to explode shortly after liftoff in the skies over Pyongyang, South Korea’s military said, amid reports that the nuclear-armed North was seeking to test-fire its largest missile yet.
The United States and South Korea have been warning that North Korea may be preparing to test-fire an ICBM at full range for the first time since 2017, possibly in the guise of launching a satellite.
US officials say at least two recent tests, on February 27 and March 5, featured North Korea’s largest ICBM system yet, the Hwasong-17.
