After a string of failures in recent months, North Korea tested two Musudan missiles with a range of up to 2,500 miles on Wednesday, one of which flew 250 miles into the Sea of Japan.
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The February launch, which North Korea said put a satellite into orbit hundreds of kilometres above Earth, came just weeks after Pyongyang carried out a nuclear bomb test, both in defiance of United Nations resolutions and sanctions.
North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un has hailed the test flight of a new ballistic missile as a “great event”, and evidence of the country’s “sure capability” of hitting U.S. targets in the Pacific.
“We have the sure capability to attack in an overall and practical way the Americans in the Pacific operation theatre”, Kim was quoted as saying.
The indigenous Musudan missile, which North Korea refers to as the Hwasong-10, could theoretically reach US troops based as far as Guam.
The attempts followed the country’s fourth nuclear test in January and the February firing of a long-range rocket it said was to put a satellite in space.
Mr Ban’s spokesman, Faran Haq, described the tests as a “deliberate and very grave violation” of security council resolutions banning the country from using ballistic missiles.
North Korea is believed to have up to 30 Musudan missiles, according to South Korean media, which officials said were first deployed around 2007, although the North had never attempted to test-fire them until this year.
During a closed seminar on Wednesday morning that was attended by delegations from all participating countries, the South Korean, American and Japanese delegations harshly criticized and denounced North Korea, sources said.
With an estimated range of some 3,000 to 4,000 km, the Musudan missile could theoretically reach any target in Japan and strike as far away as the United States territory of Guam.
“We have to see it as a success”, Lee Choon Geun, an analyst at South Korea’s state-funded Science and Technology Policy Institute, told Associated Press.
South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se warned Thursday that the North will face “unbearable costs” if it sticks to its nuclear and missile development program.
Pyongyang conducted its fifth and sixth test of the intermediate-range Musudan missile on Wednesday from the coastal city of Wonsan.
Images in March of a smiling Kim Jong Un inspecting a silver sphere, purported to be a miniaturized nuclear warhead but likened in the media to a disco ball, burnished the North Korean leader’s global image as deluded and reckless.
The North began testing the Musudan on April 15, after repeated calls by its leader for his military to conduct more nuclear and missile tests despite worldwide sanctions.
Power urged the council to promptly condemn North Korea.
Existing UN measures prohibit North Korea from using ballistic missile technology.
“Unless North Korea gives up the provocation, no country in the world will build up normal relationships with the North and no organisation will offer the North a helping hand”.
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Experts said the more likely course of weapons development for the North was to flawless a shorter-range missile that can mount and deliver a nuclear warhead, which would pose a direct threat to the United States with the capability to hit Guam.
