In a remarkable show of persistence, North Korea on Wednesday fired two suspected powerful new Musudan midrange ballistic missiles, USA and South Korean military officials said, its fifth and sixth such attempts since April.
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In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby condemned the launch.
The Musudan is believed to have a range of about 3,000km enough for it to hit South Korea, Japan and the U.S. territory of Guam in the Western Pacific.
“We would like to continue taking a close coordination with the USA and South Korea and working on North Korea (at) the United Nations, so that North Korea would not conduct such an action again”, he said.
The Pentagon said both missiles came down in the Sea of Japan after they were launched from Wonsan on North Korea’s eastern coast.
Based on Western inputs on these links, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) 1718 Committee, which is monitoring the implementation of sanctions against North Korea, sought information from Pakistan in November 2015 regarding the frequent visits of the two North Korean diplomats from Tehran to Islamabad and Karachi. They didn’t pose a threat to North America, it said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has declared his country a nuclear state and responded to sanctions by conducting more missile tests.
At first, say informed sources, Pakistan denied it, but when confronted with photographs and other recorded evidence, Pakistan acknowledged that the two North Korean officials under investigation had indeed visited Islamabad and Karachi.
The first five launches failed, either exploding in midair or crashing, and the sixth only flew about 400km – well short of the missile’s 3,500-km potential and not long enough to be classified as intermediate. About 28,500 US soldiers are stationed in South Korea to deter possible aggression from North Korea; tens of thousands more are stationed in Japan.
The tests were the latest in a string of demonstrations of military might that began in January with North Korea’s fourth nuclear test and included the launch of a long-range rocket in February.
As regional tensions remain ever present, North Korea has been pushing for dialogue with its southern neighbor since last month, but Seoul refuses to accept talks without Pyongyang’s commitment to denuclearization.
The proposal was repeated several times by the North’s military, but Seoul dismissed all the overtures as insincere “posturing” given Kim’s vow at the same congress to push ahead with the country’s nuclear weapons programme.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry called the launches a “clear provocation”.
Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani told reporters after the launch that there had been no effect on Japan’s security.
The Musudan, also known as the Nodong-B or the Taepodong-X, is an intermediate-range ballistic missile.
The string of recent launch attempts shows the North is pushing hard to upgrade its missile capability in defiance of USA -led global pressure.
“To say such an act taken by North Korea shows disapproval against China is reading too much into it”, Hua said at a press briefing.
The lower range of the Musudan would enable it to hit the whole of South Korea and Japan.
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The Korean Peninsula remains in a technical state of war because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty. About 28,500 US soldiers are stationed in South Korea to deter possible aggression from North Korea; tens of thousands more are stationed in Japan.
