HONG KONG — North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time since 2017, officials in Japan said Thursday, in a major escalation of tensions over its weapons program.
Japan’s top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno, said the missile appeared to be a new kind of ICBM, since it flew much farther than the last ICBM North Korea tested in November 2017.
Matsuno said he had briefed Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who is en route to Brussels for a NATO summit focused on the crisis in Ukraine.
“It is absolutely unacceptable that while the world is responding to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, North Korea would unilaterally escalate its provocations against the international community by conducting this launch,” Matsuno said.
The launch ended a self-imposed moratorium on testing ICBMs and nuclear weapons that North Korea declared in 2018 ahead of diplomatic talks with the United States that ultimately collapsed. The country is barred from testing nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles under United Nations Security Council resolutions.
Matsuno said the missile was launched east from North Korea’s western coast. He said it landed at 3:44 p.m. (2:44 a.m. ET) about 150 km (90 miles) west of Oshima Peninsula on northern Hokkaido Island, within Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
Matsuno said the missile was estimated to have been in the air for 71 minutes, flew a distance of 1,100 km (680 miles) and reached a maximum altitude of more than 6,000 km (3,725 miles).
So far there have been no reports of damage to vessels or planes in the region.
The South Korean military also said North Korea had launched an “unidentified projectile” suspected to be a long-range ballistic missile. South Korean President Moon Jae-in called a National Security Council meeting in response to the launch.
Earlier this month, the Biden administration had warned that North Korea was secretly testing elements of a new ICBM system ahead of a potential full-range launch. It imposed new sanctions over two missile tests on Feb. 27 and March 5 that it said involved the Hwasong-17, North Korea’s largest ICBM system. The Hwasong-17 first appeared at a military parade in October 2020, but had never been tested before.
North Korea has ramped up its missile testing in recent months, especially since the start of the year. They included an intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. territory of Guam, as well as a hypersonic missile and a ballistic missile fired from a submarine. The country hinted in January that tests of nuclear weapons or long-range ballistic missiles might be next.
Experts say such tests are an effort to extract concessions from the United States as North Korea’s economy, already struggling under government mismanagement and U.S.-led sanctions, is further damaged by the pandemic.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
