agencies
Seoul/Tokyo, Sept 15: North Korea Friday fired a missile that flew over Japan’s northern Hokkaido far out into the Pacific Ocean, South Korean and Japanese officials said. It has deepened tension after Pyongyang’s recent test of its most powerful nuclear bomb.
The missile flew over Japan and landed in the Pacific about 2,000 km east of Hokkaido, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters.
The missile reached an altitude of about 770 km and flew for about 19 minutes over a distance of about 3,700 km, according to South Korea’s military — far enough to reach the US Pacific territory of Guam.
August 29, North Korea had launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile, the Hwasong-12, which travelled 2,700 km, also over Japan.
“The range of this test was significant since North Korea demonstrated that it could reach Guam with this missile,” the Union of Concerned Scientists said in a statement.
However, it said the accuracy of the missile, still at an early stage of development, was low, so it would be difficult to destroy the US Andersen Air Force Base on Guam.
Warning announcements about the missile blared around 2200 GMT Thursday (4.30 am IST) in parts of northern Japan, while many residents received alerts on their mobile phones or saw warnings on TV telling them to seek refuge.
North Korea’s missile launch is another reckless breach of UN resolutions — a major threat to international peace and security which demands a global response
jens stoltenberg | secretary general nato
US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said the launch “put millions of Japanese into duck and cover”, although residents of northern Japan appeared calm and went about their business as normal after the second such launch in less than a month.
The US military said soon after the launch it had detected a single intermediate range ballistic missile but the missile did not pose a threat to North America or the US Pacific territory of Guam, which lies 3,400 km from North Korea. Pyongyang had previously threatened to launch missiles towards Guam.
US officials repeated Washington’s “ironclad” commitments to the defence of its allies. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called for “new measures” against North Korea and said the “continued provocations only deepen North Korea’s diplomatic and economic isolation”.
# In August, North Korea fired an intermediate range missile from a
similar area near Pyongyang that also flew over Hokkaido into the ocean. It had then said more would follow
# Pyongyang had a day earlier threatened to sink Japan and reduce the United States to “ashes and darkness” for supporting the Security Council’s latest resolution and sanctions.
# The United Nations Security Council imposed eight set of measures on North Korea’s textile exports and capped its imports of crude oil at the request of the United States and Japan on account of Pyongyang’s nuclear test September 3
