North Korea fires multiple ballistic missiles, triggering shelter alerts in Japan
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SEOUL – North Korea fired multiple ballistic missiles on Thursday, including one that triggered an alert for those in parts of central and northern Japan to seek shelter.
This is the latest in a record year of missile testing by nuclear-armed North Korea, prompting the United States to urge all nations to enforce sanctions on Pyongyang.
Late on Thursday, North Korea fired another “unspecified ballistic missile”, Seoul’s military said, just hours after South Korea said it would extend joint air drills with the United States in the face of Pyongyang’s provocations.
“North Korea fires unspecified ballistic missile,” Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
Despite an initial government warning that a missile flew over Japan, Tokyo later said that was incorrect.
Officials in South Korea and Japan said the missile may have been an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which is North Korea’s longest-range weapon designed to carry a nuclear warhead to the other side of the planet. South Korean officials believe the missile failed in flight, the Yonhap news agency reported, without elaborating.
This comes just a day after North Korea fired at least 23 missiles,
Local media reported that air raid sirens went off on South Korea’s eastern island of Ulleungdo, where residents were warned on Wednesday to seek shelter after one of Pyongyang’s short-range ballistic missiles crossed the de facto maritime border.
Japan also confirmed the Thursday launch, with the government issuing a special warning to residents of Miyagi, Yamagata and Niigata prefectures in northern Japan before 8am (7am in Singapore), telling them to stay indoors or seek shelter.
Japan’s Defence Minister Yasukazu Hamada said the government lost track of the first missile over the Sea of Japan, prompting it to correct its earlier announcement that it flew over Japan.
“We detected a launch that showed the potential to fly over Japan and, therefore, triggered the J Alert. But after checking the flight, we confirmed that it had not passed over Japan,” Mr Hamada told reporters.
The first missile flew to an altitude of about 2,000km and a range of 750km, he said. Such a flight pattern is called a “lofted trajectory”, in which a missile is fired high into space to avoid flying over neighbouring countries.
Retired Vice-Admiral and former Japan Maritime Self Defence Force fleet commander Yoji Koda said the loss of radar tracking on the projectile pointed to a failed launch..
“It means, at some point in the flight path, there was some problem for the missile, and it actually came apart,” he said.
Although the warhead came down in the sea between the Korean peninsula and Japan, debris, which would have been travelling at high speed, may still have passed over Japan, he added.
North Korea has had several failed ICBM tests this year, according to South Korean and US officials.
In brief comments to reporters a few minutes later, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said: “North Korea’s repeated missile launches are an outrage and absolutely cannot be forgiven.”
About an hour after the first launch, South Korea’s military and the Japanese coast guard reported a second and third launch from North Korea. South Korea said both were short-range missiles fired from Kaechon, north of Pyongyang.
On Oct 4, North Korea fired a missile over Japan
That launch was the first time North Korea fired a missile over Japan since 2017. Pyongyang later claimed the launch and a blizzard of other tests around the same time were “tactical nuclear drills” that simulated showering South Korea with nuclear-tipped missiles.
Confirming South Korea’s account of the launch, National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said: “The United States strongly condemns the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) for its test of an intercontinental ballistic missile.”
She said US President Joe Biden and his national security team were “assessing the situation in close coordination with our allies and partners.”
State Department spokesman Ned Price said the launch marked a “clear violation” of United Nations Security Council resolutions that prohibit ICBM launches. The launches show North Korea’s threat to “its neighbours, the region, international peace and security and the global non-proliferation regime”, he said.
“This action underscores the need for all countries to fully implement DPRK-related UN Security Council resolutions, which are intended to prohibit the DPRK from acquiring the technologies and materials needed to carry out these destabilising tests,” he added.
He did not single out countries, but China is North Korea’s primary ally and economic partner.
Pyongyang’s multiple missile launches on Wednesday came as Seoul and Washington staged their largest-ever joint air drills,
Pyongyang has called the exercise “an aggressive and provocative military drill targeting the DPRK”, and warned that, if it continues, South Korea and the US will “pay the most horrible price in history”.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol said the North’s flurry of missiles was “effectively a territorial invasion”.
Pyongyang also fired an artillery barrage into a maritime “buffer zone” that experts said was part of an “aggressive and threatening” response to the joint US-South Korean air drills.
One short-range ballistic missile crossed the Northern Limit Line, the de facto maritime border, prompting the rare warning for residents on the island of Ulleungdo to seek shelter in bunkers.
South Korea, for its part, said it fired three air-to-ground missiles into the sea towards the north of the two countries’ maritime boundary. It also closed some air routes over the East Sea, advising local airlines to detour to “ensure passenger safety in the routes to the United States and Japan”.
North Korea revised its laws in September, with its leader Kim Jong Un declaring the country to be an “irreversible” nuclear power, effectively ending negotiations over its banned arms programmes.
Washington and Seoul have repeatedly warned that Mr Kim’s recent missile launches could culminate in another nuclear test, which would be Pyongyang’s seventh.
“These are North Korea’s pre-celebration events ahead of their upcoming nuclear test,” Mr Ahn Chan-il, a North Korean studies scholar, said. AFP, REUTERS
