North Korean leader Kim Jong Un before a meeting with US President Donald Trump on the southern side of the Military Demarcation Line dividing North and South Korea, at the Panmunjom Joint Security Area in the Demilitarized Zone on June 30, 2019.
Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images
North Korea launched a long-range ballistic missile into its eastern seaboard on Wednesday, its neighbors said, two days after the North threatened “shocking” consequences to protest what it called a provocative activity in US surveillance near its territory.
South Korea’s military detected a long-range missile launch from the North’s capital around 10 a.m., the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. It said South Korea’s military had strengthened its surveillance posture and maintained readiness in close coordination with the United States.
Japanese Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada told reporters that the North Korean missile was likely launched on a lofted trajectory, at a steep angle that North Korea typically uses to avoid neighboring countries when it tests long-range missiles. missiles.
Hamada said the missile was expected to land in the sea about 550 kilometers (340 miles) east of the coast of the Korean Peninsula outside the Japanese exclusive economic zone.
North Korea’s long-range missile program targets mainland US Since 2017, North Korea has conducted multiple intercontinental ballistic missile launches as part of its efforts to acquire nuclear-tipped weapons capable of hitting major cities in the US. Some experts say that North Korea still has some technologies it must master in order to have operational nuclear-armed ICBMs.
Before Wednesday’s launch, the North’s most recent long-range missile test occurred in April, when it launched a solid-fuel ICBM, a type of weapon that experts say is more difficult to detect and intercept than liquid weapons. firewood
Wednesday’s launch, the North’s first weapons fire in nearly a month, came after North Korea earlier this week issued a series of statements accusing the United States of flying a military plane near North Korea to spy on the North.
The United States and South Korea dismissed the North’s accusations and urged it to refrain from any actions or rhetoric that inflame hostility.
In a statement on Monday night, Kim Yo Jong, the influential brother of North Korean sister Kim Jong Un, warned the United States of “a shocking incident” as he claimed that the spy plane of The US flew into the North’s eastern exclusive economic zone eight times earlier in the day. He claimed the North scrambled warplanes to repel the US plane.
In another fiery statement on Tuesday, Kim Yo Jong said the US military would face a “very critical flight” if it continued its illicit, aerial spying activities. The North’s military has separately threatened to shoot down US spy planes.
“Kim Yo-jong’s misleading statement against US surveillance aircraft is part of a North Korean pattern of exaggerating external threats to rally domestic support and justify weapons tests,” said Leif- Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. “Pyongyang has also repeated its shows of force to disrupt what it sees as diplomatic coordination against it, in this case, the leaders of South Korea and Japan meeting during the NATO summit.”
North Korea has made many similar threats over alleged US reconnaissance activities, but its latest statements come amid heightened hostility over North Korea’s series of missile tests in the first part of this year.
