Pyongyang launches suspected ICBM in North Korea

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03rd Nov, 2022. 07:23 pm
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North Korea launches an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), but it was lost in midair.
The North’s seventh ICBM launch of the year provoked a warning in Japan.
Comes as the US and South Korea stage their largest-ever joint air drills, which Pyongyang has called “aggressive and provocative”.

North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), but it was lost in midair, According to the South Korean military.

The North’s seventh ICBM launch of the year provoked a warning in Japan but was unsuccessful and landed in the ocean.

Fears that the North would soon perform a nuclear test have caused tensions to rise.

Both Koreas fired missiles at each other’s waters on Wednesday. The North launched the most missiles in a single day during the exchange.

North Korea’s multiple launches comes as the US and South Korea are staging their largest-ever joint air drills, which Pyongyang has strongly criticized as “aggressive and provocative”.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff of South Korea released a statement claiming that on Thursday at around 07:40 local time (23:40 GMT), North Korea launched a long-range missile. in the air and ascended to a height of 1,920 kilometers.

But the launch was “presumed to have ended in failure”, South Korea’s military said.

Also launched by Pyongyang were two short-range ballistic missiles.

Due to the launches, the Japanese government on Thursday morning issued an unusual emergency alert to citizens in several of its northern regions, advising them to stay inside.

Tokyo initially said the missile had flown over Japan, but Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada later said it did “not cross the Japanese archipelago, but disappeared over the Sea of Japan”.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida later condemned North Korea’s “repeated missile launches”, calling them an “outrage”.

The launch, according to the US, showed the danger North Korea’s missile programme presents to its neighbors and to global peace and security.

“Our commitments to the defense of the Republic of Korea and Japan remain ironclad,” a state department spokesman said.

Meanwhile South Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Cho Hyun-dong and US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said the launches were “deplorable, immoral” during a phone call on Thursday, according to South

The US and South Korea decided to prolong their joint air exercises until their originally scheduled end date of Friday after the ICBM launch, according to the South Korean Air Force.

It happens just one month after North Korea fired a ballistic missile over Japan, the first time in five years that it had done so.

As tensions have increased, the North has conducted a record number of missile tests this year.

Pyongyang conducted six nuclear tests between 2006 and 2017 and is thought to be contemplating a seventh despite punishing sanctions.

In defiance of UN Security Council resolutions, it has kept developing its military capacity, threatening its neighbors and perhaps even putting the US mainland within striking distance.

One of Pyongyang’s ballistic missiles that was launched on Wednesday crossed the Northern Limit Line (NLL), a contentious maritime barrier between the Koreas.

The closest a North Korean missile could go near the border was when it landed beyond South Korea’s territorial waters.

Three air-to-ground missiles fired by Seoul bombers in retaliation also breached the disputed maritime demarcation line. On Wednesday, it launched a total of 23 missiles.

Kim Jong-dae, a visiting scholar at the Yonsei Institute for North Korean Studies, claims that they were launched from numerous locations all throughout the nation.

“South Korea and the US believe that if they find the starting point of the provocation, they can precisely strike it. But there are starting points all over North Korea, and North Korea is posing multi-dimensional, systematic and simultaneous threats that they can fire (missiles) anywhere in their land. This is a situation which I’ve seen for the first time,” he told local news channel

With accelerated activity from North Korea since late September, “the end of this is likely to be the seventh nuclear test, to prove their nuclear capabilities and determination,” Park Won-gon, North Korean studies professor at Ewha Woman University, told the news channel.

Because North Korea intends to negotiate with the US as a de facto nuclear state, it is impossible to expect it to denuclearize..

Pyongyang launches suspected ICBM in North Korea

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