North Korea fires ballistic missile ‘with longest flight time ever’
North Korea has fired a ballistic missile that travelled 1,000km and flew for 74 minutes, according to Japanese officials.
The flight time would be the longest ever achieved by a missile fired by the country.
It comes after recent angry words from North Korea over what it said were incursions by a US military spy plane over its territory earlier this week.
Kim Yo Jung, the powerful sister of leader Kim Jong Un, claimed the plane had violated the air space eight times on Monday, and said if such flights continued there would be ‘a shocking incident’.
Her accusations were dismissed by both South Korea and the US, with the two countries saying their joint military drills operate within international law.
The Japanese Coast Guard said the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launched yesterday flew eastward from the Korean peninsula for around an hour before crashing into the sea west of Japan at around 11.15am local time (3.15am BST).
In a statement, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said: ‘We strongly condemn North Korea’s launch of a long-range ballistic missile as a grave provocative act that harms the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula and the international community and is a clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions.’
Both the South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida are currently in Lithuania for the NATO summit, and they are expected to meet today.
Yoon convened an emergency meeting of his national security council from Vilnius following the news of the launch, while Kishida told reporters: ‘The series of actions are threatening our country and region… and it is absolutely unacceptable.’
This morning’s ICBM test was the first to be carried out by North Korea since April.
The weapons are particularly concerning because of their long range. One such missile, launched in November last year, had the capability of reaching the US mainland, Japanese officials said at the time.
North Korea’s last missile launch took place around a month ago, when two short-range ballistic missiles were fired in response to military drills carried out by the South and the US.
Such tests grew in frequency in the spring, as anger grew in Pyongyang over the large-scale drills taking place in nearby sea and air space.
In May, an attempted satellite launch by North Korea failed, and Seoul announced the equipment had ‘no military utility’ after finding scraps in the sea last week.
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