Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that it “strongly condemns” the missile launch because it explicitly shows the North’s intentions of being able to launch missile attacks on South Korea and neighboring countries.
Advertisement
The U.S. Strategic Command, meanwhile, said North Korea fired two presumed Rodong missiles simultaneously on Wednesday, not the one.
This comes ahead of the annual joint military drill between Seoul and Washington, the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise, later this month, which Pyongyang has responded sensitively to in the past.
The government filed a protest against North Korea through embassies in Beijing, complaining that the missile launch violates U.N. Security Council resolutions. North Korea fired a ballistic missile into the sea on Wednesday.
The main body of the missile landed in Japan’s economic exclusion zone, a Japanese defence official said, escalating regional tensions that were already high after a series of missile launches this year and the decision by the United States to place a sophisticated anti-missile system in South Korea.
But North Korea is not yet believed to have the ability to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile to make a deliverable weapon. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters in Tokyo that the launch is an unforgivable act.
The military is not excluding the possibility that it might have been a Scud-type missile, particularly the more advanced, extended-range Scud-ER, also known as the Hwasong-7, which can travel more than 1,000 kilometers, long enough to cover the entire Korean Peninsula and reach US military installations in Japan.
In the recent past, North Korea has boasted of having breakthroughs in its quest of having long range missiles.
Wednesday’s launch marked the 32nd time North Korea had launched ballistic missiles since the youthful leader Kim Jong-un took over the helm of the reclusive nation in 2011.
In a statement, Japan authorities said thatthis was an indication that North Korea intends to not only destroy the airfield but and ports.
A U.S. State Department spokesman condemned the launch, and said it would “only increase the worldwide community’s resolve to counter” North Korea’s actions.
– March 10: Two short-range ballistic missiles land in the sea, hours before North Korea declares it will “liquidate” all South Korean assets at former cooperative projects in the North.
North Korea routinely conducts missile and other weapons tests, but the latest launch came after North Korea warned of unspecified “physical counter-actions” against a USA plan to deploy an advanced missile defense system in South Korea by the end of next year.
Advertisement
Oga Peninsula in Akita Prefecture, northeastern Japan, the first time that a North Korean missile’s warhead has fallen in Japan’s EEZ, the Defense Ministry said.
