With the launch of its latest ballistic missiles this year, North Korea has dragged Japan into its ongoing tussle with South Korea and the United States over the deployment of a U.S. advanced anti-missile shield in the South against the North.
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The Rodong intermediate-range ballistic missiles were launched near the western North Korean city of Hwangju.
The Japanese government is likely to always retain its interception order for any incoming missile, public broadcaster NHK reported Friday, following North Korea’s recent launch of a missile that landed near Japan.
Power said the South Korea missile defense system was “purely defensive” and aimed exclusively at protecting the South Korean people and USA and other forces stationed there from North Korean ballistic missiles. “But it’s reasonable to believe the North Korean missile program would also have Busan as one of its targets”, he told The New Daily.
Japan said the one missile had landed 250 km off its northern coast and within the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). It was the closest a North Korean missile had come to Japan since 1998.
The United States condemned what it called a clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions explicitly prohibiting North Korea’s use of ballistic missile technology.
U.N. Security Council resolutions bar North Korea from developing ballistic missiles.
A US State Department spokesman condemned the launch, saying it will “only increase the worldwide community’s resolve to counter” North Korea’s actions. There is the possibility that this time, North Korea was aiming to drop the missile in the EEZ.
Several other North Korean rockets have gone farther and even over Japan.
The Kim Jong Un regime, inaugurated in late 2011, has fired at least 30 ballistic missiles.
Up to this point, North Korea had informed the International Civil Aviation Organization and International Maritime Organization before launching its long-range ballistic missiles, which it said were “satellites”.
But her appointment could undermine Japan’s military alliance with South Korea and jeopardize relations with China, which improved after Abe publicly apologized previous year for World War II atrocities committed by Japan.
North Korea was thought to have launched those missiles last month to demonstrate a capability to strike South Korea, despite the South’s plan to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (Thaad) battery, in the town of Seongju by the end of next year, analysts said.
Meanwhile, senior defense officials from Japan, the United States and South Korea held a teleconference on Friday.
USA officials say two missiles were launched.
He stressed the importance of using dialogue and negotiations to solve the issue and pointed to “factors contributing to tension in the Korean Peninsula” in an apparent reference to the controversial USA antimissile system that Seoul and Washington agreed last month to install in South Korea. The rural area 135 miles southeast of Seoul was chosen as the base fir the new anti-missile system, which includes a powerful radar to detect missiles as they launch.the farmers worry that the electro-magnetic waves could threaten their health and their crops. The other flew around 1,000 km.
“They’ve chose to site it in Sejong City, which is more than 200km away from Seoul and the envelop of coverage from THAAD is approximately 200km, but in any case Seoul is very close to the DMZ [Korean Demilitarised Zone], so close that it’s still within conventional artillery and conventional rocket range from North Korea”.
Chinese and South Korean media outlets have characterized Tomomi Inada, the newly appointed Japanese Defense Minister, as a right wing politician who has denied Japan’s past wartime atrocities, including the sexual enslavement of thousands of women in Asia to work as prostitutes in military brothels.
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“The United States continues to believe that our response to North Korea’s destabilizing activities is stronger when the global community remains united”, Earnest said.
