North Korea fires suspected ICBM ahead of South Korea, Japan meeting

SEOUL - The leaders of Japan and South Korea strongly condemned North Korea’s latest missile launch on Wednesday, calling it a serious provocation that escalates tensions, according to the South Korean presidential office.

The position communicated by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol came after North Korea fired a suspected intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) off its east coast.

The missile launch occurred as Mr Kishida and Mr Yoon were set to meet on the sidelines of a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) summit to discuss threats, including the nuclear-armed North.

The launch came after heated complaints from North Korea in recent days,

accusing American spy planes of violating airspace

in its economic zones, condemning a recent visit to South Korea by an American nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine, and promising to take steps in reaction.

The suspected ICBM flew for 74 minutes to an altitude of 6,000km and range of 1,000km, said Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matusno, in what would be the longest-ever flight time for a North Korean missile. 

Japan’s Coast Guard had predicted the missile would fall about 550km east of the Korean peninsula.

In April, North Korea

test-fired its first solid-fuel ICBM,

one of around a dozen missile tests this year.

Analysts believe the North’s ICBMs can fly far enough to strike targets anywhere in the United States, and the country likely has developed nuclear warheads that can fit on rockets.

“It could be a second test of the solid-fuel Hwasong-18 ICBM, building on the results of its first launch,” said Professor Kim Dong-yup from the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. 

Dr Yang Uk, a fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said the latest test could be part of the North’s efforts to save face and retake the initiative after a failed launch of its first-ever spy satellite in May. 

Pyongyang’s accusations of US airspace breaches this week, which Washington and Seoul dismissed as groundless, were likely to build justification for the launch, Dr Yang said.

Dr Leif-Eric Easley, an international studies professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said North Korea was following a pattern of staging weapons tests in time for diplomatic events, such as the planned South Korea-Japan talks. 

South Korean President Yoon, in Lithuania to attend the Nato summit, convened an emergency national security council meeting to discuss the launch and vowed to use the summit to call for strong international solidarity to confront such threats.

Mr Yoon, at a meeting with Japan, Australia and New Zealand, said the North’s launch posed a direct challenge to peace in the region and the world, and to the norms-based order. 

“We cannot condone these provocations, and we must respond to North Korea’s reckless actions through strong responses and solidarity of the international community,” Mr Yoon said, according to his office.

Japan’s Mr Matsuno said the launch threatened regional and international peace and stability, and that Japan had lodged a protest through diplomatic channels in Beijing. 

With a wary eye on North Korea’s military moves and other rising challenges in the region, Mr Yoon has moved to repair frayed ties with Japan and reduce historical disputes that have limited cooperation between the two US allies. 

Nuclear envoys of South Korea, the US and Japan held a phone call on Wednesday to strongly condemn the North’s missile launch as a serious provocation that can “never be justified”, Seoul’s foreign ministry said.

They also criticised Pyongyang’s recent threats against what they described as the allies’ normal flight activity in international waters. 

The three countries’ top military generals gathered for a rare trilateral meeting in Hawaii just before the missile launch.

Similar condemnation came from Germany’s foreign ministry, which called the North Korean action “illegal” and a threat to international peace and security.

“We call on DPRK (North Korea) to fully comply with its obligations under Security Council resolutions,” the ministry said on Twitter. REUTERS